Abel Tasman National Park. Photo / Tourism NZ
Great Walks are challenging at the best of times, so how does one do it with little trampers in tow? Claire Rogers shares insights gained after tackling three walks with three children.
As a family holiday, a Great Walk can be a hard sell. There’s a lot of walking – obviously. Toss in the packs, the dehydrated meals and limited ablutions, and you pretty quickly lose the room.
But bear with me. Several years ago, my husband and I set a family challenge: to complete New Zealand’s Great Walks before our three kids, currently aged 12, 10 and 8, are too old (and embarrassed) to holiday with us.
As total novices, we first tackled the relatively gentle, five-day Abel Tasman Coast Track, carrying approximately 20kg of entirely superfluous gear. We laugh about it now. We followed up with the Tongariro Northern Circuit, which includes the epic Tongariro Alpine Crossing, and last summer completed the longest of the walks, the 78km Heaphy Track. Three walks in, and we’re fitter, wiser and completely converted to the Great Walks experience.
For quality, screen-free family time, a Great Walk really delivers. You are largely off-grid and out in nature together, with several hours of walking – and potential talking time – each day. Our kids usually take turns leading and dropping back to chat with their packhorse parents. Once at the huts, it’s more family bonding as you unwind from the day, share some treats and cook dinner. It’s all very Brady Bunch until it inevitably isn’t; for example, when someone knocks over his Milo and completely soaks his only spare set of clothes.
It’s easy to get blasé about New Zealand’s natural beauty and dramatic landscapes. The Great Walks will jolt you out of any such complacency. Even the kids, usually indifferent to calendar-worthy views, found plenty to delight in. Walking through the otherworldly and iron-flat South Crater on the Tongariro Circuit, surrounded by craggy, volcanic terrain and the famous cone of Ngauruhoe, was a surreal and awe-inspiring experience. To my imaginative 10-year-old, we were in dragon country.
The Heaphy Hut was another highlight, overlooking the point where the Heaphy River meets the roiling Tasman Sea. As we soaked in the scene, fringed by nikau palms and resplendent in the sunset, the kids revelled on the river bank, hunting for treasures and dipping in and out of the cool, clean river current.
As with any holiday with kids, adequate preparation is important. Having ticked off a few day walks in our home region of Hawke’s Bay, we had already established that the kids were very capable, if not always enthusiastic, walkers. We thoroughly researched each walk before booking (the Department of Conservation has extensive information on its website – including track descriptions, potential hazards, gear lists and difficulty ratings for each walk. For pre-walk training, we put our half-full packs on and headed up our local mountain, Te Mata Peak, tramping similar distances, time-frames and elevations as we’d face on our upcoming walk. And yes, we did get some odd looks.
When on the tracks, we usually set off early – giving plenty of time to complete the day’s distance. Often, there are natural stops along the way – other huts and shelters, lookouts, points of interest – and breaking the day up into chunks is a great way to keep kids motivated. You’ll also be stopping when nature calls, and I’m not talking about birdsong. Realistically, and despite your repeated pleas to use available facilities, you may be dealing with an urgent bowel motion on the most remote part of the track. In this situation, you’ll need a compostable bag, or a trowel and a spot well away from the track, campsites and any water. Chalk it up as a new experience for young and old.
Keeping morale up on a long day of walking required a mix of games and deep-dive conversations into our children’s latest interests. On the Abel Tasman, we were hard into the Harry Potter phase and every third stick we encountered was assessed for its spell-casting potential. There’s a limit, of course, to how many of the 1000-plus Pokemon characters you can bear to hear about, or how much I Spy you can play in the bush. This is where outright bribes in the form of cold, hard candy come in. They work on adults too.
Arriving at the hut after a day of walking can be a religious experience. Don’t get too comfortable though, as your kids will inexplicably still have energy to burn. Once you’ve bagged your bunks (fellow trampers are usually very reasonable about letting families bunk in the same room), be prepared to go exploring around the huts – there is often a postcard-perfect waterfall, swimming hole or vista just a short walk away. Back at the hut, it’s time to break out the snacks and diversions. Some huts have a collection of puzzles, cards and games, but it’s a good idea to take your own too.
For meals, we kept it simple. Breakfasts (porridge mix) and dinners (a freeze-dried meal) were as easy as adding boiling water to the sachets, stirring the mix and letting them sit. Lunches and snacks were salami and bier sticks, wraps, energy bars, lollies, crackers and cheese. While the thought of a freeze-dried roast chicken meal – complete with mash and stuffing – may not have you salivating, our kids gave it rave reviews. Enjoy the break from the nightly battle over fresh veggies.
Stepping out on day one of the Abel Tasman track, we were a tad nervous as to how our fellow hut dwellers would receive our outgoing brood, who were 6, 8 and 9 at the time. We needn’t have worried. The camaraderie in the huts is one of the best things about the Great Walks, and most of our walking companions have been delighted to see children tackling the tracks with them. We loved reuniting with our newfound friends each night, sharing stories from the day. One tramper went so far as to organise an epic “backyard” cricket match for our would-be Black Caps, constructing a bat out of driftwood and converting an avocado stone into a ball with strapping tape.
On the wall in our home office, there’s a Great Walk map. The kids love to look at the distances and climbs they’ve conquered, the huts they’ve lodged in, and remember the people we met along the way. When you sign up for a Great Walk with kids, you are signing up for a challenge. But the family memories made, the soul-nourishing scenery, and the immense and collective sense of achievement each time have us coming back for more.