East to West

A very long term commitment! Thanks for that link, I'll surely be referencing that while making some plans for later this year.

How did you get on with the Dusky, @madpom ? Did you walk it, or fly into Supper Cove and start from there?

Easy 2 days from west arm to supper cove with night at Kintail. Carrying 12 day pack including raft, etc. Rafted from 3km below Loch Maree Hut which helped avoid the worst bit. Generally 4hrs between each hut. Kintail to Loch Maree very poorly cut/marked but otherwise a good tramping track similar to the rougher tararua tracks in difficulty. Very few muddy spots ... far better than I expected - a sentiment echoed by others I encountered. Rafted from Supper Cove to Fanny Bay over the Dusky. Easy paddle in perfect conditions then up&over and down the chain of lakes in Oho Creek then overland to the Cape.

Epic effort @Madpom I hear what you are saying about diaries; once upon a time I used to keep little notebooks of thoughts and experiences from trips I did. My now wife finds them funny when she stumbles across them because she finds a lot of the writing so different to how I would normally be. Tramping does seem to bring out a variety of mindsets in us!

Easy 2 days to Supper Cove? Wowsers. It was 13 years ago I did it so it is but a distant memory, but that is not how I would have described it! Great stuff, anyway. What's the next challenge? Do "Wildboy"'s walk around NZ, but actually walk the coast of Fiordland???

The bit I love is "... then overland to the Cape" You make it sound so easy!

'"… then overland to the Cape" You make it sound so easy!' It wasn't! 3km of scrub-crawling in 4 hours to reach the open tops from Edwardson Sound. But rewarded by an afternoon of excellent, enjoyable 'Tararua tops' type travel along the western fork of the Kakapo Range - which really was both easy, beautiful and fun. The bush down Newton River was surprisingly good. I'd expected more scrubbashing, but boggy Manuka-saddles aside it was relatively pleasant open forest, the main challenge being navigation to keep above the gorges. The pack raft was handy again for a quick crossing of Lake Fraser and the deep slowmoving sections of the Newton to the coast from below the gorge. And to be able to escape the sandflies for a while! Very much worth the extra volume and weight for the raft, paddles, lifejacket. The only other group I've managed to track down who traveled a similar route did this all on foot and had to swim across the Lake Cove inlet in Edwardson Sound!

I have a vague recollection of a group (OUTC?) walking there in the late ‘80s. They planned to walk there and back, arranged a helicopter food drop for when they arrived at West Cape. The helicopter came in with their food but they decided to come out on the helicopter rather than take the food and walk back.

@Madpom: Did you make use of info from/about Mike Abbott's 1988-1989 traverse of the South Island in figuring out your route? I'm curious if there is a full description of the route he took on that trip available anywhere. Thanks for making your trip/route description available, a hugely useful resource for others wanting to join up some of the gaps in travels through the South Island mountains. I'm also curious, was the traverse west of Lake Te Anau enjoyable/rewarding or just a great ordeal to get through as part of the greater goal? I'm guessing a bit of both.

Amazing achievement madpom. I'm seriously impressed and certain that no-one else will repeat this anytime soon. This has to put you right at the top of a handful of elite trampers in this country in terms of fitness, skill, commitment and contribution back to the community. Just writing it up as you've done is something I deeply appreciate. Cheers PS: From your route guide "Fanny Bay to Oho Saddle": "Finding suitable dry flat ground for camping was challenging. I eventually found a dry spot at the southern end of the large tarn shown on the map 200m to the west. The basin is exposed to the NE but sheltered to winds in other directions." I'm almost certain that would be the same spot Chris Ward and I camped for a few nights in the 70's. He took a picture of me cleaning out the cooking pot in that same tarn and it was later used as the cover pic on OUTC's annual magazine that year.