Thursday 02.03.2023

• Te Araroa kilometres done: 2174
• Official kms: 32.5km
• Garmin kms: 34.96km
• Total time: 10:40
• Calories burned: 3708
• Body battery: 8/10
• Accommodation: Tent
• Tent nights tally: 16
• Zero days had so far: 22

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Track me live here:

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We slept in this morning. I woke at 6:15am. I felt like it was a good sleep! I’m missing Antonia this morning & am looking forward to seeing her on Saturday.

The plan is to leave at 8am today & find a camp spot after about 28 kilometres.

We left on time as planned & I felt a bit slow for the first 10km as my feet were sore. About 4km in we reached Cameron hut a 4 bunk hut with only 1 useable bunk. Still plenty of camping around it. We stopped here for a few minutes to sign the book before carrying on.

About 8 kilometres in we stopped for a 15 minute break, I took this opportunity to take painkillers for my feet. After continuing on it was only another 1.5 kilometres to Harpers Biv & another 1.5 kilometres from there to Harpers pass itself. This is where we crossed from the East coast to the West coast.

It was a steep descent down the other side which for me was slow going. After dropping about 400 metres it seemed to even out a bit.

We decided to not stop until Locke Stream hut for lunch, it was around 1:30pm when we reached the hut & stopped for a good 30 minutes.

After leaving Locke stream it was pretty fast going, we did the 8.5 kilometres to Kiwi hut in under 2 hours where we had our last break.

After this it was 9 kilometres & 6:40pm before we actually stopped to camp, unfortunately the spot I chose for us didn’t actually fit my tent which takes up a lot of space.

I ended up continuing nearly another kilometre down the trail before finding a suitable spot.

I set everything up, got dinner on & before I knew it the time was 8:30pm! Not much downtime tonight.

A good sleep is in order after todays long day. Fingers crossed….