Our Hiking Blog

We love it when readers  share information and new ideas. Sonja contacted us recently about Food to Go and asked how many vegetarian recipes there were in the eBook. She is heads off on many multiday trips in Australia and was looking for some new  ideas.

There is a vegetarian backpacking food section in Food to Go but it is not massive. We sent Sonja a copy to check it out i.e. if she was not happy, she did not have to pay for it.

The upshot of these communications was we did a swap, Sonja received a free copy of Food to Go and she sent us some great vegetarian bushwalking meal options!

Over to Sonja:

I have read your book, Food to Go. It is very good and informative.  The examples by a range of bushwalkers is really interesting. I purchased two american trail food books (off amazon) that I believe were a waste of my money.  Your book is very good and offers a range of good recipes and meal planning information. Continue Reading…

Ask anyone to tell you about the ideal setting for their dream vacation and they will probably describe a picture perfect vision of rolling hills clad in dense green bush, topped with towering ferns and crisscrossed by crystal clear creeks, all exuberantly tumbling down towards the shores of the deep blue sea where a curvy sweep of pale white sand neatly divides solid ground and whispering waves.

In short they will just have described the Abel Tasman Coast Track, one of New Zealand’s 9 Great Walks.

Totaranui Beach

Now, you would be hard pressed to find a country more hiker friendly than New Zealand: thousands of kilometers of tracks and routes wind around the countryside, and a nationwide network of backcountry huts provides safe shelter and welcome comfort at the end of a long day’s tramp (for in New Zealand you do not hike, trek or bushwalk: you tramp). Continue Reading…

We have never set foot on New Zealand soil. We’ve  just never been able to make the time to tramp any of the wonderful trails that are available. It is something we need to fix in the future.

Rick from Best Hikes  just brought a new trail, planned to be officially opened later this year, to our attention.  It is well worth a look if you have some free time and a desire to walk a very long, tough track.

Stretching from Cape Reinga in the North of New Zealand to Bluff in the South,  the Te Araroa is one of the world’s longest walking trails. Hundreds of volunteers have helped create the continuous 3000 kilometre-long route.

There is a fantastic website devoted solely to this new trail.  Some of the highlights to look out for are:

- excellent, detailed track notes and descriptions following a really clear format – an example is the first section, Cape Reinga Coastal Walkway

- beautifully produced, 1:50,000 strip maps of the whole trail. We downloaded just the North section and there are 70 high resolution, pdf pages! (watch the size)

- fascinating “trail stories” with links to sites created by “thru walkers”  who tackled the trail before it was officially opened.  Some of these are real adventure stories we could only shake our head at after reading them…For example from Matthias ‘Matze’ Mard’s entry from 2004:

After a cold and very wet night I carried on. The path got steadily more extreme: the mountains became ever higher and they exist of a type of stone that gets slippery when it’s wet and from which large pieces of stone had broken off. As if that was not enough, I had to cross a few rivers again and I began seriously asking myself why I was there.

Continue Reading…

Phew,

Frank here. It has been a busy few weeks around the Our Hiking Blog household. Over the last four weeks I have led a seven, three and four day trip along the Great Ocean Walk in Victoria, Australia for Raw Travel. Today I am doing the preparation for my next 7 day trip commencing tomorrow.

It has been a fascinating experience. Having grown up in the region and explored many areas of the Great Ocean Walk for 40 years I have still been surprised by it’s magnificence.

This is a very different form of walking to what we are used to doing, i.e. it is fully supported with accommodation “off track”. I have met some fantastic people and enjoyed listening to everyone’s story. Interestingly, many people have underestimated the challenges provided by the GOW but everyone has been stunned by the beauty, isolation and magnificence of this part of the country. It truly a “Great Walk”.

A picture tells a thousand words so here are a few images taken over the trips for you to enjoy.

Wild day - Great Ocean Walk

Some wildlife we encountered Continue Reading…

Every now and then we come across a jewel of information about the Overland Track in Tasmania. In the following video, shared on our Facebook page by Mark Finlay. you get a real feel for the track conditions, scenery and huts.  It is a delightful production and we enjoyed every minute of it.

Overland Track from rfphotographics on Vimeo.

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If you have done the Overland Track and want some great memories, check out this video. Alternatively, if you are planning the trip from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair, study this video closely. You will learn a lot and see why you need to be prepared for all types of conditions.

Thanks Mark for giving us the heads up on the video and letting us know our How to Hike the Overland Track ebook was very helpful.

What do you think?

How was the video?