How I learned to stop worrying and love the bush

Since some of you have been asking about the logistics of my Stewart Island/NW Circuit walkabout, I figured I would do a quick post to explain how I pulled it all together.

FOOD: I packed about 10 days worth of food, and I ate the same thing every day. 2 packets of instant oatmeal in the morning, cheese and crackers for lunch, trail mix for a snack, and a freeze-dried instant meal for dinner. Multiply that list by 10 and you have a pretty good idea of how much food I was carrying. It was a lot of weight at first, but my pack got lighter with each passing day.

CLOTHING: 3 t-shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of pants, 3 pairs of underwear, 3 pairs of wool socks, rain coat, and a fleece hat. As you can probably imagine, my clothes were unbelievably nasty by the 9th day. I coined a term for the condition they had attained: "terminal stankocity."

SHELTER: The nice thing about hiking in New Zealand is that the Department of Conservation maintains hundreds of backcountry huts along the tracks. Every night I stayed in one of these huts. They typically provide bunks with sleeping pads, a table with benches, a wood stove, and a sink with a rainwater faucet (which means that I never had to worry about purifying water). A sleeping bag is really all you need to stay in one of these huts.

OTHER GEAR: I did all my cooking with an MSR Pocket Rocket stove attached to an MSR IsoPro isobutane cannister. This setup worked great because all I ever had to do was boil water, which it did very quickly and with a minimum of weight and bulk. Probably my favorite bit of non-essential gear were the gaiters I purchased before the hike. They are basically just nylon pant legs that attach to the bottoms of your boots and extend up just below the knee, with the purpose of keeping mud, rocks, and other junk out of your boots. I was amazed at what a great job my gaiters did. My shoes always got plenty wet, but no mud ever made it inside. Possibly the best 40 NZ dollars I have spent yet.

So there you have it...thats how I survived 9 days in the Stewart Island wilderness. I you have any more specific questions, feel free to post another comment!