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Te Araroa : Cosmo’s Gear Advice for the First Time Thru-Hiker

Are you preparing for your first thru-hike and find yourself completely overwhelmed by all the gear lists, technical terms and lightweight or ultralight musings? Like when you read other hiker’s blogs and they talk about their trail runners getting soaked while walking through wet grass and you just think: ‘What in the world are trail runners? Aren’t hiking shoes waterproof?’ If that’s you, then this blog post is for you.

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Te Araroa (Part 3) : Getting Into It & Getting Lost, day 10-15

The Te Araroa settled into its typical north island behaviour. Each day the trail would take me though a variety of beach, farmland, 4wd backroads, forest tracks and roads: a collection of everything and nothing in specific. But I was about to create my own drama for a couple of days. And this is what happened.

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Te Araroa (Part 2) : The Muddy Forests, day 6-9

The muddy forests. Three Northland forests made of nothing more than a jungle of trees and mud. It’s an introduction to bushwhacking more than anything else, with rivers to replace eroded tracks but mostly, it’s a cruel initiation to mud.

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Woop! I’m in GLAMOUR!

I’m really excited I wrote a story for GLAMOUR! If you’re interested in backpacking and curious about how to get into it, this is a good tale of what you probably don’t want your first trip to be like. But let me tell you, it was definitely an adventure!

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