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Article: Equipment before theTA

More than 3000 kilometers have shown which equipment is really essential. I still wouldn’t call myself a complete purist, but every step has shown me that every kilo counts and what I really “need”. Except for my emergency kit, I used every item I had with me on a daily basis. And that should be exactly the standard when packing your backpack for such a long hike, not what I might need someday, but what I need every day. Everything that does not fit this description is certainly just unnecessary weight. If you are really missing something, you can usually buy it somewhere. In my experience, this will happen in the rarest of cases.

Among other things, it also depends a little on how fast you plan to hike. If you want to be as fast as possible, then every single gram you don’t lug around on your back certainly counts. Every single item is a tradeoff of comfort, weight, and to some extent safety. The longer you take to complete a section, the more food you have to carry. Conversely, that makes you a little slower again.

What I mean by safety is essential utensils, like a PLB, or some other kind of emergency signal in case something bad happens and you need to be rescued. On the TA, it’s not uncommon to be away from civilization for several days. If you break your leg, your only option is to be rescued from the air.

What I mean by comfort is how much weight you carry or what luxury items you don’t want to do without because you are attached to them or they make your day. My luxury items are a small keyboard and my frisbee, which have made writing the blog much easier and provided joy after a busy day. For me, they were worth the 350 grams. Of course, you can also reduce weight by buying lighter, and thus generally more expensive, gear.

Even with my slimming, I never made it below 10 kilograms of base weight. Anything more would have been sacrifice that I wasn’t willing to make or that I didn’t want to spend the extra coin on.

Everything else is necessary.

If you asked a purist, you could certainly do without much more. But I am of the opinion that you do not have to torture yourself unnecessarily. There are hikers who completely do without a tent, or only use a very slimmed-down version, a so-called bivi. Without a tent, you have to make sure that you always arrive somewhere with a roof over your head.

Others travel without a stove. They then soak food throughout the day or eat food that doesn’t need to be prepared. For me, a warm meal is balm for the soul, especially after a cold, wet day.

Clothing

• Running shoes Asics Gel-Pulse (after 500 km exchanged for Salomon X4 Ultra Wide)
• On the South Island I swapped my hiking boots for a pair from Quechua)
• Sandals
• 1 pair of tennis socks
• 1 pair of toe socks for hiking
• 2 x merino boxers
• Hiking pants with detachable legs, only used for evenings
• Shorts for hiking
• T-shirt breathable
• Merino Long Sleeve
• Rain jacket
• Normal warm jacket (also serves as a pillow)
• 2 x Buff (as neck or headscarf)
• Cap
• Glasses and sunglasses

As for clothing, I decided on shorts for hiking during the day and longs for the evenings. For hiking I wore a longsleeve, which protected me a bit from the brutal sun. Otherwise, two pairs of boxers, two pairs of socks, a warm jacket for the evening and a rain jacket. My warm jacket also doubled as a pillow.

Footwear

I had originally planned to hike the entire North Island in running shoes. I was not aware, due to poor planning, how muddy and steep the slopes would be. So it happened that after the first 500 km I switched to hiking boots, Salomon X4 Ultra, in the wide version. The boots were certainly one of the best purchases I have made on the trail. I hiked 1600 km into the South Island in them until they almost fell off my feet. After that, I had another pair of boots that I had brought with me from Germany. Since this second pair still has enough profile, I would say that the two pairs would have been enough for me, one for each island. For evenings, I had a pair of sandals with me.

Hiking poles I would count to the two categories comfort and safety. Sure you can get by without them, but especially on steep and muddy passages they can be a real lifesaver. I can’t even count on two hands how many times hiking poles have saved me from falling. As a bonus, they take some weight off my legs and make me walk faster. At some point, I got so used to them that they felt like an extension of my arms.

Packing

My pack, an Osprey Kestrel, with its 68 liter capacity, was just the right size for me. There were many other hikers who had significantly smaller packs, however, they also had much more compact equipment and couldn’t carry as much food as I could. More compact equipment is usually bought through price. I was not willing to exchange things I already owned just because they were too big or too heavy. Furthermore, I still had three drybags and a 3 liter water bladder with me. However, in the last month I didn’t use the water bladder because there were always rivers and smaller streams along the way where I could fill up my 1l filter bottle.

Since I found that my rain cover that came with the backpack didn’t really ensure that everything stayed dry, I got myself a pack liner, a large bag, in which I stowed everything.

Electrical appliances

• Smartphone Pixel 6 pro
• Kindle Paperwhite
• Powerbank 10000 mAh
• Foldable keyboard
• Cable and adapter
• Notebook and pen

My Kindle is essential to me wherever I go. I’m sure others would consider it a luxury item. I had an Onyx Boox Nova with me in the beginning. Unfortunately, it broke on my first day. Furthermore, I had my small keyboard, a few charging cables, a power supply that can be connected to the New Zealand power grid with me. Since I switched to completely digital notes on my phone at some point, I didn’t use my notebook at all. I can somehow think differently while writing by hand, but then it outweighed that I did eventually digitize most of it. My 10000 powerbank was more than enough to keep my phone going for more than 6 days at a time. If you leave it in flight mode, it hardly uses any power. There was no reception most of the time anyway.

Toiletries and small stuff

• Sunscreen
• Toilet paper
• 3 dry bags
• Zip bag
• Nail clippers
• Carabiner
• Plaster
• Blister plaster
• Ibus
• Sunglasses
• Knee bandage
• Frisbee

Toilet paper is a must, as you don’t need any in the huts or in the wilderness. My first aid kit really only consisted of a few blister plasters which I hardly used, a few ibos, water filter tablets, antihistamines. Sunscreen is extremely important, otherwise you get completely burned by the New Zealand sun. Some money and two credit cards, as a backup in case paying with your cell phone doesn’t work. In most cases, however, it is not a problem. I had both my credit cards as well as Paypal in my Google Wallet. Contactless payment is really awesome. Paypal actually works very well over it. I have it tied into my phone as a virtual credit card.

Overnight

• Tent for two people 1.2 kg
• Sleeping bag 10 ° C 740 grams
• Sleeping bag liner
• Inflatable mat (360 grams)

Two man tent, a sleeping bag with a comfort zone of 10 degrees, plus liner, were warm enough most nights. There were maybe 5 nights where I would have needed a better sleeping bag. The liner gives a little more warmth and washes easily. I would recommend one with a comfort temperature of 0 degrees. For an air mattress, I had a cheap one from Decathlon that came up to my waist. As mentioned, my jacket rolled up served as a pillow.

Cooking and water preparation

• Alpine Loacker Speed gas stove 1L
• Gas cartridge 230 g
• Katadyn water filter bottle 1 L
• Water bladder 3 L
• Water purification tablets
• Knife
• Spoon
• 3 plastic containers

For cooking, I had a Jetboil knockoff with me. With a 230 g gas cartridge I managed for about 4 weeks. That is, I cooked my dinner with it and now and then a cup of tea. The pot serves as a plate and a cup at the same time. A spork, combination of fork and spoon and a folding knife for chopping vegetables. My little plastic containers were quite handy for storing cut vegetables and spices.

As mentioned above, I carried a 3 liter water bladder and a water filter. If there was no farm land nearby, I usually did without filtering. Since at some point I hardly carried any water with me, I would certainly have gotten by without the bladder. However, depending on how much it rained, that can be useful to be able to carry extra water.

What I would do differently

I would go for hiking boots right from the start. My sandals were too heavy. A pair of flip flops would have been perfectly adequate. My backpack was not designed for the weight. At the beginning of each section, including food and drink, I must have had 20 kg of weight. I guess the backpack has a comfort weight of 15 kilos. Above that it is uncomfortable and the waist strap keeps coming loose, so I had to readjust it every 20 minutes.

Lighter pants for evenings, for example leggings.

What I have removed since the beginning of my hike

• Belt – Replaced with a cord
• Rain jacket – Replaced with a lighter one, old one was no longer waterproof
• Running shoes – boots
• Gloves – no replacement, there were two moments when I would have liked them, not enough to justify them
• Rain pants – no substitute, who gets wet, will also dry again
• Tent – lighter and bigger
• Sleeve for my sleeping bag – got along without it, just stuffed it into the backpack and filled in gaps that way
• All kinds of small stuff – lighter, rope, glue, earplugs, unicorn
• Adapter and EU power supply – swapped for a power supply for New Zealand, all my devices are charged by USB
• Soap – don’t need it in the bush. Where there is a shower, there is soap.
• Towel – I switched to air drying, works great
• Spare t-shirt – I did well with the longsleeve for the day and a t-shirt for the night.

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