Resupply

One of the common questions we get is about how we'll resupply food and other essentials while we're on the trail. All of our past trips have been short enough that we could prepare everything in advance - from food to sunscreen to batteries - and just mail packages to stops along our route so we could pick them up on the way. That is not going to work on this trip... Pulling together 5 months of supplies in advance is basically impossible.

Gear

Backpacking gear is really awesome. It continually amazes me how light and compact survival gear has become. Super lightweight, durable, waterproof/water resistent fabrics have made shelters, sleeping bags, packs, and clothes incredibly lightweight and compact. Extremely minimalistic backpackers can safely walk into the wilderness for days at a time with less than 10 pounds on their backs, which is slightly more than the weight of a gallon of milk. That doesn't include food or water, but it still boggles my mind.

Nerd alert: scraping TA trail notes from the web

Half of the fun of these long trips is the planning.  I used to think it was bizarre to enjoy the complicated planning and logistics that go into any long trip (hiking or not), but I've since realized that it's just part of my nature as a computer scientist/engineer, and I've embraced it.

One of the things I've been working on lately is gathering the trail notes for the TA into a compact form.  The trust that created and maintains the TA has a fantastic website with a lot of essential information.  One of the most important things available there are the trail notes - essentially, directions for the entire 3,000 km route.  They are available on the web as nicely formatted pages like this one.  They are also available for download in PDF format.

This is great!  Unfortunately, if you print out the PDFs, it ends up being close to 250 pages of notes.  Even if you split that up and only carry the notes for one section of the trail at a time, it's way more paper than we want to carry, and it's not as convenient to reference while we're on the move.

Why are we going?

So why are we going on this trip?

First, it's a big challenge - physically, but more so mentally.  I think Liz and I both want to see if we can actually make it.  There will be low points... the day will come when it's been raining for 5 days straight, we've been eating the same noodles for dinner every day for 2 weeks, and we have 8 more miles of hiking through scratchy bush on a muddy trail before we can set up our tent in the rain and eat a cold dinner.  Can we push through moments like that and accomplish the feat of hiking across an entire country?  If we can, we'll come out the other side with a fantastic sense of accomplishment.

What have we gotten ourselves into?

Ever since we rented our condo, booked plane tickets, and told our jobs we'd be leaving, we've been slowly telling our friends and family about our plan to hike all 3000km of the Te Araroa.  We usually get one of a few different responses, ranging from "Are you nuts?" to "That's awesome!" to "So, like, where will you sleep?  Will you stay at hotels along the way?" And, of course, there are always those unfortunate few who just say "Must be nice" and move on.

Despite the cosmetic differences, the majority of people that we share the news with convey two things to us: they are happy and excited that we're going on a big adventure, and they also have no way to relate to what we'll be doing.  I'm guessing this is because most people don't spend much time out in the wilderness, and can't really imagine what thru-hiking for months on end is really like.  So, I'll try to describe it a bit, at least as I see it.