I went hiking last week.
so.
I am not even dead.
That is the best part of the story, but also:
I spent five days (march 29-april 3) hiking in Tongaririo national park. I started with the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, spent a day on the Tongariro Northern Circuit, and on day 2 met up with the Round the Mountain track, and I walked around Mt. Ruapehu for the remainder of the 80km jaunt.
I like hiking, but I’m a little scarred now. I’m taking a break to go wwoof for a farm that raises heritage breed animals and makes their own sausages and cures their own meats. I really would rather club a few piglets than go hiking again at the moment, so that’s perfect.
Anyway, it’s getting to the point in my trip where people are getting dewy on the phone asking me about what I’ve learned, so this week I learned this:
1. Blisters really have no size limit! They don’t really need to stop at your feet. The blister on the bottom of my right foot is deeper than Lake Taupo. I could process trout fishing permits for it.
2. Heavy food is bad food. Aluminium cans are bad and wrong and there is a reason for their not being displayed in the ‘hiking food’ section of the gas station. Those gas station employees do more hiking than you think they do.
3. Hiking 80km alone is somewhat different from driving 80km alone. There is more to worry about besides who will change the cd or how to hold the bag of chips so the driver has the best angle for eating and driving.
4. Volcanoes have some key features that distinguish them from mountains. This is important to remember, even if from far away they both look like big, giant rocks. One of those big giant rocks is full of explosive lava. The other is not. The latter is better for walking around.
5. Summer weight sleeping bags are useful for maybe one month of the year. This is not that month.
6. If the word ‘hiking’ does not appear in the name of the kind of footwear you are wearing, it is not good for hiking. See ‘hiking boots’ versus ‘sneakers’.
7. My favorite things to think about if I am hiking with someone else: the next meal, the pretty things we’re walking by, how nice it feels to be outside, how much I like walking quietly in the woods, how enjoyable it is to be alive, etc.
8. My favorite things to think about if I am hiking alone: falling off a cliff, getting lost, hypothermia, running out of water, avalanches, poisonous spiders, choking on my lunch, being swept away in a failed river crossing, the abominable snowman: fact or fiction, etc.
9. Things that are nice: pillows, soap, electric kettles, not hiking.
