Te Araroa Trail forums

i'm not pointing the finger at anyone in particular in my comment,its a general comment to what i've seen in people talking about tracks like the TA,,, like i've seen great comments about the john muir trail. but if you look at a profile of the track and its elevation you're left in no doubt it's a challenging track, i'd never read anywhre about the amount of passes and climbing involved, i had to actively search for that specific information to find a map on it and i happened to attend a talk where the talker mentioned the total altitude gain.... sometimes it can be hard to gain an objective view of what a trackis like , ideally it would be best to have an objective view BEFORE you start walking it rather than get a rude shock on it.

Haa haa, silly American trying to tell kiwis you know better. :) Nyaa nyaa ne naa nyaaaah. Starting a topic in these forums is always an invitation for everyone to go off on opinionated soapbox tangents that largely miss the point of the original post. Thanks for the balance. :P

ha-ha -- isn't that what Americans are (supposed to be) all about? :)

I'll add that I'm a fan of soap-box tangents, but I'd hate for it to take away from @citizenjane's original post noting that there's now a set of forums out there focusing on Te Araroa. :)

or create an alternate soap box thread...

theres a new forum dedicated to te araroa for those wanting to contribute http://teararoatrail.freeforums.org/index.php

For you folks hoping to do a wilderness-based traverse of New Zealand, I just want to reassure you that climbing skills aren't required e.g. multi-pitch belaying, but basic snowskills (ice axe, crampons and maybe some limited knowledge of rope work including setting up anchors and knowing knots)are certainly required, IMHO and experience.

Nah. A soap-box thread won't stop people from getting on soap-box tangents in threads that began with other things. It'd just attract posts that might otherwise have been their own threads. :) I think it'd help if changing the subject line when responding to posts would automatically spin off a new (but connected) thread. As is, it only changes the title of the individual post but leaves it as part of the original thread, and then all follow-up responses revert back to the original thread.

Thanks Honora -- that's what I meant to say. Just substitute "basic snow skills & some exposed scrambling" for where I said "climbing" in my post above (the really long, rambly post)... For any potential TA hikers out there, I do remember 3 specific places where TA had some scrambly bits that involved more exposure than a risk-averse hiker like me was willing to do: * somewhere in the Tararuas, although I can't remember the spot. I seem to remember a revised TA/Tararua route (bypassing it) being easy to devise. * same for somewhere in the Richmond Range, except I don't remember an easy bypass. * Waiau Pass, which might very well present a dead-end & required turnaround for any hiker uncomfortable with exposed scrambling. Here I definitely agree w/Waynowski that (at least 3 years ago) TA had not done a good job advertising the potential difficulty of these 3 bits. Then again, I think most Kiwi trampers would scoff at the difficulty factor, since it seems that the skills required are genetically hardwired in Kiwis. :) Eric Martinot's TA report is fairly essential reading for any potential TA hiker (although it's pretty old now), and I believe all three spots were mentioned within: http://www.martinot-nz.info/nztrek/j.htm Maybe these have been re-routed since my research 3 years ago. Or not...

nah the younger kiwis are softer than the older generation... too much riding around in cars.... tv, computer games....