Day 8: Raetea Forest to State Highway 1

Distance Covered: 16 km (plus traversing 7 gates of Hell)

I’m not sure how to start with today. It defied expectations on how bad a “trail” can be? We ran out of ways to imagine the “trail” could be worse? There were no more swear words in our vocabulary?

Here are some things we would tell others who are about to tackle the Raetea Forest trail:

1. Consider not doing it. If you did Herekino then you saw everything already. It’s a whole lot more of the same “scenery”, but with a whole lot more hazards.
2. The trail notes call it a bush track. This seems to mean “we went through a few years ago with a machete and hacked a path through the forest where we could.” The forest seems to have grown back significantly since then.
3. Expect significant mud. Way more than Herekino. Unless you are wearing knee-high boots, you cannot plow through many of the hundreds of deep mud pits as the mud can reach halfway up your shin with each step. Our slogan today was “Embrace the Mud” and we did, often choosing deep mud over trying to go around. At one point near the end, when we just wanted to get out and were plowing through everything as fast and directly as possible, Emily walked through a mud pit and quickly sank up to both knees. 
   
   
4. The trail is overgrown with vines, grasses, and branches. There will be sections where you will need both hands to push through and feel with your feet. There will be sections where you can see where you need to go, but vines are grabbing you and your gear. While twisting through one vine, Emily caught her backpack on a small trunk that had been broken so it was pointy. She tore her mesh open on one side. Also, there will be plenty of going over felled logs and under trees, sometimes directly into a mud pit.
   
   
5. The path can be quite dangerous if it’s even a little muddy. There are steep ascents and descents, sometimes 70 or so degrees with little to hold onto. Over the years, any roots that may have existed on the descents have largely been covered with mud from previous hikers that have tramped down. Emily and I were both exceptionally cautious in these sections and we still took bad falls. At one point, I was standing on the upper edge of a slope with both poles firmly on the ground on stabilizing positions. When I lifted one foot, the ground gave way underneath me and one pole sending me sliding for several meters.
   
   
6. Unless the trail is dry (no rain for at least several days), expect this to take much longer than the 8 hours it states. We took about 12 hours to go 16 km, with about one hour total of breaks.
   
   
7. If you weigh yourself before and after, taking into account gains and losses from things like sweat and nutrition, you will have a nonzero number. This is the weight of your soul that was sucked from you.
   
   

Our honest interpretation of the trail is that it has become both overused and under maintained. It’s called a bush track and it warns of slippery mud and mentions steep sections. We went in ready for a challenge, laughed and commiserated through km after km, and joked about it all being part of a game show akin to The Hunger Games (although we called our show The Misery Games). I told Emily that “No matter what happens years from now, part of me will always love you for going through this forest with me with such a positive attitude.” 

So we think we are being fair in wondering about the trail. It was cut from tropical rain forest, so you know the soil quality is going to be poor for heavy use. And the trail goes up and down peaks high enough to catch clouds to make rain regularly. Five or so years of what must be hundreds of hikers each year have beat it up. And, unfortunately, there are literally a few views, each just a couple meters wide, along the whole route. Most of the time its greenery pressing on all sides and from above. This means that not many locals are going to hike it, which means the serious money needed to maintain it will be hard to come by. 

This is not the Te Araroa managers fault. We believe they have done incredible work and are in awe of the job before them. I don’t honestly know what could be done as it would take perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars to get it in shape so that at least the heavy erosion caused by trampers is mitigated.

OK, rant over. Some fun things are

1. We saw a Weta. This is a large cricket type insect that lives several years. It’s kinda cool. I found it on my shoulder after pushing through some vines.
   
   
2. We got poured and hailed on late in the afternoon. (We expected to be done with the trail by then). This allowed me to act through that scene in Jurassic Park where the guy stealing the embryos falls down the steep hill in the downpour and has to scramble back uphill. Muddy water streamed past me as I crawled hand and foot uphill to retrieve a trekking pole. It was funny to me anyways. Some of the bird calls here sound suspiciously like dinosaurs…
   
   
3. We built a lifetime memory together.
   
   
4. At one point, very near the end, we were following what we thought was the trail when it petered out with no markers. We ended up doing some serious bush whacking to get back on trail. (Retrospective Note: We found out later that a sign was placed wrong and everybody got sent into the bush)

The next section has big warnings about not attempting it in the rain. As we have been getting a lot of it this evening we will likely have to take the alternate road walk around.

Onwards and Forwards!

UPDATE: We talked with a very nice couple the next morning who drove by to check on campers that might be near them. They said that we received near record rainfall (2.5 inches) and that more was forecasted. They also said they had a Special Forces friend who had trained all over and said the Raetea Track was the worst trek he'd ever done and that was before all the serious rain would make it even worse. Emily and I are still surprised at the level of difficulty. We send all the best to anyone who chooses to take it on.

(Retrospective update: Every hiker we met the rest of the summer referred to it as "The Damn Raetae". Everybody had a story or quip about their experience there and laughed while telling their tale of woe.)