Which of New Zealand’s Great Walks should you do?

This article compares the five walks people ask us about most, including one that is not a Great Walk at all and is on the list because half the people who ask for it believe it is.

The booking date decides everything

Bookings for a whole Great Walk season open on one announced date each year, several months before the season begins. Milford and Routeburn huts sell out within minutes of that opening. Kepler and Abel Tasman go quickly. Several of the others are genuinely easy.

The practical consequence: if a specific Great Walk is the reason for the trip, the trip is planned around that date rather than around your annual leave. That means agreeing target dates six to eight months ahead, having a second and third choice ready, and someone online at the moment bookings open. We do that part, and we tell you honestly on the day whether we got it.

If you cannot commit that far ahead, do not build a trip on the assumption that you will walk the Milford Track. Build it on a walk you can book.

The season, and what the huts are

The Great Walk season runs roughly from late October to late April. Inside the season the huts are serviced: bunk rooms with mattresses, a hut warden, cold running water, flush or composting toilets, and gas rings in a shared kitchen on most of the tracks. Outside the season the facilities are reduced, the tracks are not maintained to the same standard, and several become serious undertakings rather than holidays.

What the huts are not: hotels. There is no bedding, no food, no reliable heating and no shower. You carry a sleeping bag, all your food and your clothes for four days, a pack of around 22 to 33 pounds (10 to 15 kg) for most people. That is the part that surprises walkers who are fit but have never carried weight for consecutive days.

There is an alternative. Milford and Routeburn both have guided options using private lodges: real beds, hot showers, cooked meals, a guide, and a day pack instead of a full one. They are booked separately, fill far ahead, and cost several times the independent version. For many of our travellers they are the right answer.

The five, compared

The Milford Track

The famous one, and the reason it is famous is genuine. Four days from the head of Lake Te Anau up the Clinton valley, over the Mackinnon Pass at about 3,490 feet (1,065 m), past Sutherland Falls and down the Arthur valley to Sandfly Point on Milford Sound.

Three things make it unusual. It is walked in one direction only, by a fixed number of people per night, so you cannot lengthen, shorten or reverse it. It begins and ends with a boat, so your dates are locked to transfers as well as huts. And it crosses one of the wettest inhabited places on earth, which produces the waterfalls people photograph and also four days of wet boots.

Difficulty, honestly: it is not a hard walk. The pass day is long, and the rest is valley floor. What makes it demanding is four consecutive days with a full pack in persistent rain, and the fact that there is no way out once you have started. If you have not walked consecutive days with a pack before, take the guided version, which almost anyone in reasonable health can do.

The Routeburn Track

The one we recommend most often, and not because it is second best. It gives you more time above the bushline per day of walking than anything else here: the traverse under Conical Hill, the Harris Saddle at about 4,200 feet (1,280 m), and the long sidle above the Hollyford valley with the Darran mountains opposite.

Two or three days, and the two-day version is comfortable for a fit walker. The complication is the geography: it starts near Glenorchy and finishes at The Divide on the Milford road, roughly 200 miles (320 km) apart by road. Book a track transport service or you strand your hire car. We arrange it as a matter of course and it is the thing independent walkers most often forget.

The exposure is real. The high section has no shelter and Fiordland weather changes inside an hour. In poor conditions the alpine section is closed, and that decision is made for you.

The Kepler Track

The one that is harder than people expect. A loop from Te Anau, which is its practical advantage, since your car is where you left it. Day one climbs about 3,300 feet (1,000 m) to Luxmore Hut, and day two runs along an exposed ridge for several hours above the Te Anau basin.

That ridge is why we rate it the most demanding of the four. It is superb in clear weather and genuinely unpleasant in bad weather, and unlike the Routeburn there is no short alternative once you are on it.

Choose the Kepler if you want the alpine day, could not get the Routeburn, or value the loop.

The Abel Tasman Coast Track

The outlier, and the one we build most often for people who are not really walkers. Golden beaches, clear water, easy gradients, no altitude, and the great advantage that water taxis run the whole coast, so you can walk one day, two days or all five and be collected from a beach.

That flexibility makes it the right first multi-day walk, the right choice for a mixed group, and the only one on this list that works with children. It also means it is busy, that the accommodation includes campsites as well as huts, and that you carry your own stove, since these huts have no gas rings.

Two practical points. The Awaroa inlet crossing is tidal and has to be timed, and the tide does not negotiate. And the sandflies at dusk are relentless, which is a strange thing to say about the prettiest coast in the country.

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing, which is a day walk

We include it because it is the walk most often described to us as a Great Walk, and it is not one. The Great Walk in that park is the Tongariro Northern Circuit, a three to four day loop over some of the same ground. The Crossing is a single day of about 12 miles (19.4 km), point to point, climbing past the Mangatepopo valley to Red Crater at roughly 6,190 feet (1,886 m) and down past the Emerald Lakes to Ketetahi.

It is the best day walk in the country when the weather cooperates and dangerous when it does not, on exposed volcanic terrain with no shelter and a loose descent from Red Crater. There is a parking limit at the start, so everyone uses a shuttle, which we book.

Build a spare day. It is called off often enough that a single fixed attempt is a poor plan, and it is a hard day for anyone who does not walk regularly.

The ones nobody asks about, which are easier to book

The Heaphy Track, 48 miles (78 km) across the northwest of the South Island from beech forest to nikau palms on a wild coast, four to five days, usually bookable.

The Rakiura Track on Stewart Island, three days, muddy, quiet, and in a place where you have a real chance of seeing a wild kiwi at night.

The Paparoa Track, the newest of them, two to three days across the range above Punakaiki.

These are not consolation prizes. We would rather put you on the Heaphy with a booked bed than on a Routeburn waiting list.

What a walking trip costs

Land only, per person, two people sharing, excluding international flights.

Hut fees are set by the Department of Conservation and change year to year, so we confirm the current figure. A guided lodge walk sits outside these anchors.

Our Great Walks route in 16 days is built around two multi-day tracks with recovery between them, which is the shape that works.

Plan this trip

Tell us your dates and which walk matters most, and we will tell you honestly what is bookable, what is not, and which alternative we would put in its place. Free, and with no obligation.

Start planning

Related

• New Zealand: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The Great Walks route in 16 days
• New Zealand month by month
• How many days do you need in New Zealand?
• New Zealand in 21 days

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