For part one click
here, and part two click
here
My gear for this hike was very similar to the set up I
had for
Around Mt Ruapehu so this will be a bit of a comparison post. My pack
started off at 20kg (including 3 litres of water), but finished at 13kg when I
got home so it started quite heavy, but got much more manageable as time went
on.
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| Looking a little worn on day three |
My pack was the same 50 litre pack as I always use, which
is a little small for this length of hike. To get around this, I strap my
sleeping mat and other small bits to the outside of my pack, to give myself a
little extra valuable pack space, this seems to work out very well. The
sleeping bag I took on this trip was a 12°C which I paid $20
for (really good bargain). This bag was pretty much at its comfort limit, but I
have a liner and thermals if I really needed them. The mat I have is short and
thin, I’d love to upgrade to a thicker one, but this one does its job and I
don’t really want to pay $300-$400 for a good light weight mat.
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| Sleeping mat in red on the outside of my pack |
My clothes were much the same as a normal hike, light
sports shirt and shorts, Gortex rain coat, and
injinji compression socks. The
only difference here was the amount, two full sets of clothes, new socks each day
(5 pairs of long socks adds up to a lot) and a thermal top. The injini socks
were great, the only negative I found was that during the day if I was in
regular socks I could take them off to dry when we stopped to eat, however the
injinji socks are such a pain to get on, taking them off for 15 minutes wasn’t
really a viable option. The only major difference was the gloves I bought. I
found some simple neoprene type material gloves. If wet they don’t hold a lot
of water, so there worked out great for me.
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| Day one was spent in the gortex jacket |
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| From another hike, but those are the gloves I use |
Food and cooker was the same set up as usual. The only
changes were note that I bought a block of chocolate, and a chocolate bar for
after dinner each night (4 chocolate bars). This really helped as a nice treat
and something to look forward too. However I did notice after eating at about
7pm I was hungry again at 9pm. I lost about 2kg on the hike, which I didn’t
mind since I wanted to get leaner, but if you’re at your desired leanness I
would suggest bringing even more food, possibly some dehydrated mashed potatoes
and/or coconut oil to add to everything. This is something I may have to play
with in future. Also to note I bought 5 apples with me, one for each day. It
was nice to have something fresh to eat, but it did mean starting with a kilo
of apples.
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| My standard cooking set up (wine on shorter hikes). |
This trip I didn’t want to bring a tent, so I bought
myself a bivi sack. I bought the terra nova moonlite, which is a small, light
weight bag. It worked really well for me. I also bought a tarp so that I could
set up my own shelter if the rain was pouring down. However it ended up easier
to lay down my tarp as a ground sheet (3x3m tarp would have been better than my
2x3) and use a friend’s 3x3 light weight trap as the cover. This let all three
of us fit in the one shelter. We were each in a bivi sack to stop any rain that
happened to blow in, which it did, while trap blocked the worst of the rain.
This set up worked really well since my bivi is really only for the lightest of
rain, since it doesn’t have a water proof face cover.
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| Camp half way set up |
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| The bivi bag I bought |
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