The Hardest Walk Ever and a Cancelled Road Trip

Have you ever done something and been surprised at how physically challenging it was? This happened to me last month. My brother and I did the Kauaeranga Kauri Trail (aka Pinnacles Walk). I almost died!

Then once we were back in civilisation, I had to cancel the Coromandel road trip I had planned for afterwards. Thanks Covid.

I’ve organised this retelling of my adventures by disasters. The disasters were the notable parts of the days concerned and make the most entertaining stories.

Disaster 1 – the walk

The Department of Conservation (DOC) website lists the Pinnacles Walk as intermediate difficulty. This supposedly means it’s a comfortable multi-day tramp suitable for people with average fitness and limited back-country experience. I thought that was me. I’m not overweight; I don’t have a bad back or dicky knee; I thought I had average fitness.

About half an hour into the estimated four-hour walk I was ready to turn around and go home. If it hadn’t been for my brother, I would have done so. The track was very rough (lots of large rocks and other odd surfaces to scramble over) and more uphill than down. My legs felt like jelly (cliché I know, but true).

On the upside, my phone started ringing about half-way up. Turns out there are several spots along the walk with usable cell phone reception, so my brother took the chance to update his snapchat. I never thought there would be reception so far into the middle of nowhere.

We had booked a night at the DOC hut near the top of the trail (thank God! There is no way I would have made it both up and down on the same day). We arrived shortly after sunset and it was dark! When I booked, there had been 39 of 78 beds available, so even with the recent covid-19 developments, we had been expecting there to be lights on and several people around.

All the lights were off. There wasn’t even a warden on duty! We did find a some bags piled together in a corner of the bunkroom so someone else must have been there, but at that stage there was no one to be found. The middle-aged couple who belonged to the bags got in some short time later having been to the Pinnacles lookout.

Disaster 2 – dinner

After setting up our bunks, we went into the kitchen area to cook our dinner. Thankfully, the other couple had stoked up the fire before heading out and it was nice and warm. Other than that, dinner was a complete disaster.

To me, ‘Cooking Facilities’ means more than a couple of gas stoves. Still, it was a DOC hut so I wasn’t expecting much – maybe some worn out pots and a selection of random cutlery. There was none of that. The kitchen literally had gas stoves and sinks – that was it! Which was fine until you consider that everything has to be carted up and down the track.

I had brought a small saucepan (more because I thought we might get lost in the bush than because we’d need it at the hut) which everything (pasta, peas, and cheese sauce sachet) ended up being cooked in. We also didn’t have any plates, so I ate straight from the pot and Sam had his food in the click-clack I had packaged the peas in. The only cutlery we had was an old knife that I had thrown in my bag at the last minute; I ate using that (at least until the nice couple leant me a spoon) and Sam used an old ID card.

Disaster 3 – the night

With very little to do and exhausted from the walk, I went straight to bed. The dorm had no heating and it was freezing inside. Despite wearing every article of clothing that I had with me, my usually warm sleeping bag was unable to keep me warm enough to sleep. I considered myself lucky to have managed four hours of proper sleep – the rest of the night was spent in a shivering doze.

On the one hand, I wish I had taken another blanket to keep myself warm. On the other, there is no way I would have been able to carry yet another item on the way up; my backpack felt heavy enough as it was.

We had wanted to go up to the Pinnacles lookout in the morning before making our way back. There was no way I was going to walk any further. Sam reckons he’ll go right up to the top one day with some of his friends and get the photos he wanted.

The walk down was much more pleasant than the walk up. For one thing, it was mostly downhill. For another, we had redistributed the stuff in our bags so mine at least was easier to carry. A couple of times we missed the actual track and ended up going down the flood detours which was interesting (the flood detours are much harder to navigate safely than the regular track).

Disaster 4 – the cancelled road trip

Two days before we set off from home, news broke of the first case of community transmission of Covid-19 in New Zealand in over 100 days. Travel was still allowed around the Coromandel, but I decided to cancel/postpone my plans anyway.

The Coromandel is very near Auckland, and many Aucklanders go to the Coromandel for the holidays and/or own a holiday home there. There was a lot on the media at the time about Aucklanders escaping the higher level of lockdown in Auckland by going to the Coromandel before the roadblocks keeping them from leaving were put in place.

There was quite a bit of bad feeling directed towards these Aucklanders. After all, they might have brought Covid-19 out of Auckland and put the rest of the country at risk, and were using resources that have to be trucked onto the peninsular. I didn’t want to be that out-of-towner with locals thinking that I should have stayed at home.

So I made the decision to cancel the rest of my trip. Hopefully, I’ll be able to complete the trip in November.

Still, I had two fantastic nights and an utterly luxurious day lazing around my motel room in Thames (Rolleston Motel – great place). And before I left Thames, I visited the Thames Museum and did the Goldmine Experience. The trip wasn’t entirely wasted.