Day 21: Waipu to Mangawhai Heads

Distance Covered: 29 km

The end of week three. And the Northland (roughly equivalent to a state). The trail notes are broken into ten sections, with Northland being one of the largest, so this feels like a real accomplishment. We are over 400 km in now, so that’s something too. There's still a lot of time and distance remaining, but this section is done so even if we have to leave, this is something to hold onto.

And people are leaving, by the way. Two guys we knew recently left saying it wasn’t for them. We are pretty sure another couple left too. This is understandable and we wish them the best. If you’re not enjoying it enough to stay then why keep going?

Our UK doctor friend that we started out with made the news in a bad way. He made it all the way through the Herekino and Raetea mudfests of a trail, but twisted his ankle on a relatively less sketchy section. It was bad enough to need rescue. It took four hours for them to stretcher him out. He says he wants to come back to the trail in a few weeks once he heals enough. Another woman also injured herself enough to leave, but we don’t know the details other than it happened on a trail we made it through. Emily and I have both had a number of close calls and it’s only sheer luck that we didn’t get more hurt. Everyone we know has had rough falls and said the same thing. The trail is awesome in parts and rough “bring a machete and military boots” in others.

Anyway, back to today. It started with 7.5 km of road walking. The town has recently invested in a long walking path out of town and it was awesome. Set off from the road, largely not cement, and trees where possible for shade. 

We met an older gentleman hiking the other way who said the ridge part later wasn’t too bad, so that was good. He’s been section hiking small parts for years now. Soon he’ll have completed the whole trail.

The big news from walking up the ridge for today was the wind. It started up when we started going up. Even with both headphones on loud volume, the wind was louder. Our packs were filled with food for the next few days and water for the whole day as there was no known trail source. Even still, we were leaning into the wind. At the top, where recent logging has removed the natural shelters, we estimated the winds were easily in excess of 40 mph and likely much higher at times. We held onto our hats and staggered a few km before making it through to unlogged sections. After that much wind, it felt like a relief just to be able to hear again!

A lunch later, we walked the forest path up and up. We ran into the Alaskan and he said he was doing a half day. Too much walking with not enough time off to recover. We empathize and need our own rest day soon. He split off shortly after to stay at a forest bed and breakfast highly reviewed by other hikers.

Then up and up again up to about 300 meters and good views. The down was all down all at once. A whole day of gentle to moderate climbing was reversed in two km. The last part was stunningly steep and required care. Then a minor detour on great trail around a planned subdivision. Then more road walking. Then some pastures, which gave Emily a chance to practice her sheep herding skills. 

And a crazy, steep uphill that required making our own switchbacks up the grass. Our Cyprus friend told us later she tried going straight up and very nearly fell backwards!
The day ended with a great beach cliff walk. I really liked this section and would warmly recommend it to others! Good to awesome views, good trail quality… it’s everything you could hope for I think.

And then down, down to the beach on stairs and a km or two of beach walking to the car park that signified the end of the trail. Woohoo! From there it was a km or so to the holiday park with discounted rates for TA hikers and camping with our friends. We are quite a bit removed from the restrooms, but we ate sheltered from the wind in some trees. I asked the woman who checked us in about the wind. She said they’re called the equinox winds and that they’ve gone on weeks longer than normal this year. It’s driving them all crazy, she said.

Tomorrow is more road walking (yay) and then beach walking. The notes caution about three river crossings on the beach and we are unsure how real or not the danger is. We will find out soon enough!