Drama on Te Araroa Trail
Seasoned endurance ultra-hiker Brad McCartney reckons New Zealand’s long-distance trail has ample room for improvement. He talks to Lorna Thornber.
‘‘I cycled past huge drug plantations. The people I passed were very friendly. I realised I was being protected by these people. Tourists who get killed or go missing in places like this bring unwanted attention.’’ Brad McCartney on his journey through the Golden Triangle
Brad McCartney was cycling the back roads of cartel country in Mexico when he was stopped by three men in military uniforms with machine guns.
Learning they were part of the Sinaloa drug cartel, described as ‘‘the greatest criminal drug threat in the United States’’ by the American Drug Enforcement Administration last year, he answered all of their ‘‘many’’ questions carefully, especially the one about his occupation – he’s a former policeman.
The members of the cartel, headed by Joaquin ‘‘El Chapo’’ Guzman until his recent arrest, eventually let him pass and he continued on his way through the Golden Triangle, so named for the fields of opium poppies and marijuana hidden within the Sierra Madre mountains where the states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango intersect.
‘‘I cycled past huge drug plantations,’’ the 47-year-old Australian says. ‘‘The people I passed were very friendly. I realised I was being protected by these people. Tourists who get killed or go missing in places like this bring unwanted attention. I was offered food, water and beer regularly. Despite the perceived dangers, I felt very safe.’’
Situations of this sort might not offer the kind of adrenaline boost most of us crave when we travel, but McCartney isn’t most people.
Bedridden with chronic fatigue syndrome six years ago, he is now a long-distance, ultra-light hiker and cyclist extraordinaire, ricocheting from one mammoth test of endurance to the next. His conquests include the ‘‘Triple Crown of Hiking’’ (the Appalachian, Continental Divide and Pacific Crest trails in the United States) and cycling from Alaska to Mexico.
Canoeing is a sideline hobby but he’s still managed to paddle
715 kilometres down the Yukon River in Canada and, as part of his current trek along New Zealand’s Te Araroa Trail, a 165km stretch of the Whanganui River. And he doesn’t let anything – from drug cartels and desert storms to grizzly bears and giardia – stand in his way.
Hiking the full length of Te Araroa from Cape Reinga to Bluff, a total of
3000km, McCartney has come up against flash floods, randy bulls and a ridiculous amount of rain, even for someone who spends a lot of time in extreme climates. Still, he’s enjoying it – when Stuff caught up with him he had recently completed the 94km Alpine Route in Marlborough’s Mt Richmond Forest Park – although he thinks there’s ample room for improvement (but more on that later).
Fortunately for McCartney, he seems to have a selective memory in favour of the positive: ‘‘Overall, I always seem to remember the pleasure much more than the pain.’’
McCartney has been into adventure travel since his teens but it wasn’t until he was rendered immobile by chronic fatigue in 2013 that he began reading the hiking and cycling blogs that would inspire him to trade his steady job for a life on the road (or, more aptly, trail).
‘‘After almost a year, my energy slowly returned and I realised I’d been given a second chance,’’ he says. ‘‘From that moment, I was determined to lead a life of adventure for as long as my body allowed.’’
Taking a year’s sabbatical from his cop job in Darwin, McCartney hiked and cycled his way around Tasmania before flying to Alaska and hiking, cycling and canoeing down to Mexico.
In the Grand Canyon, he got chatting to an ‘‘older gentleman with a very small backpack’’ who introduced him to the concept of ultra-light backpacking: carrying the minimum amount possible so you can cover more ground in greater comfort. Every milligram matters. It’s not uncommon for ultra-light obsessives to snap their toothbrushes in half to lighten their loads. For avid longdistance hikers it makes particular sense: putting less stress on your body will, all going well, enable you to keep hiking for many years to come.
McCartney had thought only athletes did long-distance ‘‘thruhikes’’ (this is how true hiking aficionados spell it), but ‘‘this older gentleman was overweight and didn’t look at all athletic.
‘‘But he had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) twice, and the Appalachian Trail.
‘‘For several days I peppered him with questions . . . that chance meeting set off a chain of events that changed my life.’’ Within 10 weeks of returning to Darwin, McCartney had quit his job, sold everything he owned save his house, bike and active wear, and set off for the States.
The PCT – which passes through vast stretches of desert, three national parks, seven national forests and the Rocky, North Cascades and Olympic mountains, on its 4265km route from Canada to Mexico – tested him physically and mentally like nothing else ever had.
Thirty six days into the 147-day trek he considered abandoning it. Hobbling through drought-stricken Golden Oak Spring in southern California, his ankle throbbing in pain, he ‘‘looked and felt like someone in a nursing home.
‘‘My legs were stiff . . . It all started to overwhelm me,’’ he says on his blog, admitting that he may have shed a tear or two. ‘‘I reminded myself that I’m not a quitter but the doubts started to sink in.’’
He pushed on, putting on music to boost his spirits, eventually arriving in a field full of wildflowers that, in their sheer beauty, revived him.
‘‘Amazingly, I forgot about my ankle pain. Everything seemed renewed . . . Things will be all right, I thought. Nature is inspiring.’’
Finishing the trail in September 2015, McCartney described it as the single best experience of his life thus far.
His next hiking challenge – the
5000km Continental Divide Trail, a fabled route that traces the spine of the US between Mexico and Canada – proved even tougher than the PCT. And consequently even more rewarding.
‘‘I had one section where I had to carry food for 320km between resupply points, during which time the temperature dropped to minus-12 degrees Celsius and my hiking shoes froze,’’ he says. ‘‘All the while keeping an eye out for grizzly bears.’’
At one point, McCartney reckons he almost triggered a wet avalanche. Hiking at altitude through the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado, the ice suddenly gave way beneath his feet, producing a crack of about
30 metres.
‘‘Shaken, I made my way to a snowfree high point . . . Mentally, I was not in a good place.’’
He continued for another
400 metres or so before arriving at a steep descent and traverse to Mt Montezuma that literally made him shake with fear.
‘‘This was the point where I could go no further,’’ he says, adding that his gut told him not to take the risk.
Turning back, he found an easier route along lower ground and safely made his way back to the trail.
Such incidents, he says, are what ‘‘give me experience and knowledge’’ and ultimately make him ‘‘wiser’’.
McCartney also suffered giardia, an intestinal infection that causes cramps and diarrhoea, and ‘‘another mysterious illness that left me so weak I almost gave up and called for rescue’’ on the trail. He battled blizzards, sandstorms, altitude sickness, and the gnawing feeling that 12- to 14-hour hiking days were slowly killing him.
‘‘I’m wasting away,’’ he wrote in in a blog post on day 100 of his trek.
‘‘My body is eating itself in an effort to keep moving north.’’
Reaching the Canadian border,
McCartney broke down in tears.
‘‘All the stress, hardships and pain I had suffered over the past 164 days were released . . . ’’ he wrote. ‘‘It was just [fellow hiker] Bubbles and I there . . . We celebrated with Tim Tams.’’
It was while he was in Ecuador, having cycled down from the US, that McCartney began contemplating tackling the Te Araroa Trail. After months of struggling to get by in Spanish in Central and South America, he was eager to spend time in an Englishspeaking country and Te Araroa, New Zealand’s fastest-growing international tourist attraction, ‘‘came to mind’’.
Officially opened in December
2011, the trail is a work in progress, with lengthy on-road stretches, often on busy highways. There is often no alternative route to closed sections of the track and hikers are reliant on the kindness of strangers in parts. Te Araroa’s website notes that there is no official transport across Wha¯ nga¯ rei Harbour so recommends hitchhiking the perimeter of the harbour or ‘‘trying to flag down a boat to get a ride across.
‘‘We understand and appreciate this is far from ideal – but hope to have it sorted ASAP,’’ the website states.
McCartney was aware of such issues before setting out in October
2018, but decided to attempt to hike it in its entirety anyway.
‘‘This was not the best decision as the North Island is more of a route than a hiking trail, but I already knew that. It was the South Island I was looking forward to.’’
At times though, the North Island exceeded his expectations on the adventure front.
Canoeing grade-one rapids on the Whanganui River was fun, but fairly easygoing, until heavy rains hit. At first, the rain didn’t bother him: ‘‘It just added to the drama of being in a wild place.’’ On day three though, large waves created by boulders in the rapids flooded his canoe and, after being funnelled through two ‘‘walls of water’’ that he estimates were a metre high, he and his partner lost control. And began to sink.
‘‘As we listed to the right, I was thrown from the rear of the canoe,’’ he says. He managed to wedge the canoe between rocks, bail out the water and get back on his way but soon found himself seeking shelter from a thunderstorm in ‘‘small bushes’’ on the riverbank.
Back in the water, he heard a rumbling from behind and turned to see a stream they had just passed had flooded the river.
‘‘Full-sized trees entered the river and the water created a wave that pushed all the way across the 80-metre-wide river. This made me nervous,’’ he recalls.
Continuing on and ‘‘constantly looking back in case the whole river was about to descend on us’’, they eventually made it to Downes Hut, where 10 other canoers were warming themselves by the fire.
Much to his surprise – and delight – he recognised them, having met them at various points along the trail, and they spent the evening trading adventure tales made all the more dramatic by the flickering flames.
An ‘‘extroverted introvert’’, McCartney says he rarely feels lonely on the road as he enjoys his own company – as well as being being able to make his own judgments about the world as he passes through it uninfluenced by others. Going for several weeks without a proper conversation while cycling through northcentral Mexico, however, made him realise he does need to connect with others on a semi-regular basis.
‘‘For the first time in my life I find myself lonely,’’ he wrote en route to the Unesco-listed city of Zacatecas. ‘‘It’s a strange and unusual feeling . . . The last couple of weeks have taught me rather brutally that I need a good conversation every once in a while at the barest minimum.’’
McCartney funds his travels with the rent he collects on his house in Darwin and, while this affords only ‘‘a very small income’’, it’s enough to get by on if he lives in a tent.
He is unsure how long he will sustain this nomadic lifestyle, saying, ‘‘For me, the journey is the destination and the journey often takes me into the unknown.’’
He takes each day as it comes, step by arduous-yet-energising step.
A recent social media post read: ‘‘I hiked 225km with over 10,000 vertical metres of elevation gain, swam in mountain streams, saw the Milky Way galaxy every night, had many close encounters with sandflies and some of the best scenery and weather possible in the Richmond Ranges of the South Island, New Zealand.’’ The preface: ‘‘What did you do this week?’’
Well done if you can top that.
You can follow McCartney’s travels on his blog and Instagram.
‘‘Full-sized trees entered the river and the water created a wave that pushed all the way across the 80-metre-wide river. This made me nervous.’’ Brad McCartney of canoeing the Whanganui River after heavy rain