Te Araroa Trail: Why walk northbound (NOBO)?

“Why did you decide to walk Te Araroa northbound (NOBO)?” is a question that you get quite often when you have decided to walk the trail NOBO. But why is that?

With a trail that is largely set up for walking southbound (SOBO), it is not a strange question to ask. In fact, the official Te Araroa Trail Notes are written completely from a SOBO perspective, making it a tad more difficult to imagine the trail when going the other direction. During Te Araroa there are also the options to canoe and bicycle some sections along the way, and this is also made harder since you can only canoe the rivers in a SOBO direction, and on Timber Trail you can only bike SOBO, at least if you’re using the bike rental companies in the area. There is also the fact that for a lot of people, Te Araroa may be their first long-distance hiking trail, and then it is perfect to start from the north, with more civilisation and an easier way to switch out gear along the way, as well as a possibility to get fitter and more experienced along the way, as most of the mountains are situated at the southern part of the North Island and on the South Island.

So then, why would you walk NOBO, you too may now wonder?

If you’re not new to hiking, and you don’t mind walking instead of doing the canoe and bicycle parts, you may find NOBO is not such a strange idea after all. At least, here are a few of the reasons why we decided to walk NOBO.

1. People

   You miss a big part of "the horde", as most start from the north and it's easy to get stuck in the "crowd" of other people, and have to "fight" over the limited accommodation options, especially in the north as in the north you have to rely on trail angels and holiday parks for accommodations, while in the south you can, most of the time, camp anywhere. During some sections there is also just the huts to rely on, and few places to pitch your tent around them, like in the Tararua and Richmond Ranges, so around there it definitely helps to not be "in the crowd" and have to arrive first to secure a spot. We met some people in that situation and it didn't seem fun. It was very "chill" in that regard, to walk the other direction. During the time when we hit the crowds, we could just pitch our tent anywhere instead (because it happened south of Richmond's for us). 

   Less people = more personal. This is a pro for us at least. It felt like we knew almost everyone around which was nice, but it was never crowded.

2. You get the best part first, while you're still excited 

   If you start from Bluff you have the option to go in with all your excitement in the beginning, when everything is the most beautiful (in our opinion, though the nice part starts about 1-1,5 weeks in). And all the challenges comes gradually when going NOBO on the south island as the toughest part is the Richmond's in the north of the south island. By the time you're there, it will just feel like anything else you've encountered before.
   This also gives you the option to skip the north island, or parts of the north island completely, should you want to make that decision. When thru-hiking it's easy to get a kind of “fatigue” and get tired of hiking. Lots of people hitchhike on Te Araroa. But if you start from the south, you could do the full south island easily without hitchhiking (because why would you want to skip anything there?) and then, when you've come to the north, you can decide then how you'd like to continue. If you only want to hike parts of the north island, if you want to bike it, if you want to just travel around, or walk the whole thing.

   Having that option when getting there, is quite nice. We met a lot of NOBOs who walked the whole south, but then decided to travel or only hike parts of the north island. And with the experience we have, the north island is definitely interesting in it's own way, but you could get a better experience perhaps, by not walking it completely. But that's a very personal decision. It's just nice to have options when you get there.

3. The season

   When hiking NOBO, you hike with the season, rather than against it. This means that if you’re a fairly quick hiker, you can pick the best part of the year to hike, and if you’re not, you can get a very long season. Since you don’t reach the mountains immediately when starting from the south, you can start hiking fairly early. Just keep in mind that parts of the trail might be closed due to lambing season. Also, once you’ve passed the Tararuas and Tongariro Crossing, you can pretty much take it as slow as you wish, since there are no more mountainous areas to pass. Also, north of Auckland you have “the winterless north”. That being said, all of this is also reasons why people decide to hike SOBO, because then you have plenty of time in the start of the hike.

   Pros of walking SOBO

   There are of course, a lot of pros walking from the other direction too, like how you will never be lonely (that's a pro for some, but definitely a con for us) and like we mentioned earlier - if you're not completely confident with yourself and with your gear, it's easier to stop or get new gear in the north. The canoeing and biking parts will also be easier, should you decide to do that.

   If you're experienced though, we don't see any pros starting from the north. However, it of course depends on the time of year you can do your hike too.