Solo Hiking the Routeburn Track with Emily

I have a confession. Isaac goes off on quite a few trips by himself, and I keep saying that if he gets to, I want to as well. But I haven't been brave enough to do it yet (watch this space).

So when Emily told me she'd walked the Routeburn Track on her own, as her very first Great Walk, I had sooo many questions. Emily is a Wellington-based travel content creator and blogger who has been travelling pretty much her entire life, and she loves sharing stories that get other people out exploring.

We chat about how she got hooked on travel, fitting trips around work, and what solo travel teaches you. Then we walk the Routeburn: grabbing a booking when people cancelled, the bus that gets you from one end to the other, each day on the track, her pack and her hut food (noodles for breakfast, yes really), and how she kept herself safe. And I came away wanting to book another Great Walk. Again.

In this episode

• How Emily fell for travel
• Planning trips around work and a dog
• Solo travel and what it teaches you
• Booking and planning the Routeburn Track
• The Routeburn Track day by day
• Pack weight, hut food and hiking snacks
• Huts, company and staying safe on your own
• Emily's advice and her next Great Walk

How Emily fell for travel

When Emily was very small, her family moved overseas to Saudi Arabia. While they were there, they travelled to Europe, Africa and other parts of Asia, taking advantage of having so much close by. Getting places from New Zealand is a bit trickier.

She doesn't remember a lot of it. What stuck were the photo albums from those trips, full of little captions and mementos, which she spent a lot of her childhood looking through. They're a big reason she documents her own travel so much now.

Back in New Zealand, travel meant a lot of camping and hours of driving to random locations. That's what made her fall in love with the idea that you can have adventures in so many different ways and in so many different places.

The Middle East is such a good hub for travel. Billy, who I talked to a couple of episodes before this one, grew up in Dubai for a little while and did lots of travel around there too. Those two need to swap stories.

Planning trips around work and a dog

When she was younger, Emily was a big planner, with a constant fear that if she didn't plan everything out, she'd miss out. These days she's a lot more flexible. Some trips still get planned properly, because specific experiences book up, and on others she picks the place and figures it out once she's there.

I'd never thought about it by type of trip. Around New Zealand, Isaac and I are often quite spontaneous. The last time I travelled in India, every single location was planned out, because there were trains and flights to catch.

Until earlier in the year we recorded, Emily worked a traditional nine to five office job, so her travel fitted around long weekends and annual leave, including driving for four hours on a Friday after work. Then she started a fully remote job. She still does her 40 hours, with more flexibility in where they happen, and she got to work from Wānaka for a couple of days.

Her dog goes to a really great daycare and boarding service when she's away.

Pets are a big factor in how freely a lot of people can get away, and I'm keen to get Tegan on the podcast, because she travels with her dog and her cat.

Solo travel and what it teaches you

Emily's husband comes on several of her adventures, if he can get time off work and it's something they both want to do. She also does quite a lot of solo travel. If there's something she's really excited about and he's busy, she heads off on her own.

She does enjoy it. It's scary when you first start, and then you realise all the good things about it. In her words, solo travel teaches you:

"how to be independent, trust your own judgment and also motivate yourself because there's no one else around"

There's nobody to tell you to leave the hotel and go and do the thing. It still scares her a little sometimes, and the more she does it, the more excited she gets. Her husband is super supportive: he has hobbies he likes doing by himself, and travel is one of hers.

Isaac is studying outdoor education, so he gets to go off on trips for his degree, like whitewater rafting. I'd love to do the same, and I guess practice is what gives you the confidence.

Booking and planning the Routeburn Track

Doing a Great Walk had been on Emily's to-do list for a really long time. They book out really quickly, and she'd never managed to grab one. Then, earlier in the year we recorded, lots of people were cancelling their bookings and there was a lot of availability on the track.

She kept an eye on it and found dates that lined up with cheap flights to Queenstown and time off work. So she jumped on it: she was doing the Routeburn, and it was happening now. It was one of her more spontaneous travel moments, followed by lots of planning.

Gear and fitness

First, the gear, so she'd be safe and comfortable. She read lots of other people's blogs to see what they'd taken, checked DOC's advice on what to take, and bought or borrowed anything she didn't have from very kind friends.

Second, fitness. She went on lots of walks carrying her pack. You get a few funny looks on a one-hour bush walk with a really big pack, but it's good training, so you're not surprised once you're out there.

Getting to and from the track

The logistics are the tricky part. The track itself is 33 kilometres, and the drive between the start and the end is far, far longer.

Emily booked a bus with a company called Easyhike, which dropped her at the start of the track and picked her up at the end. They collected her from central Queenstown and dropped her back at her hotel afterwards, so once she'd finished the walk, she didn't have to think about a thing.

She walked from the Glenorchy side to Milford. There's a bit of debate about the best direction, and Emily thinks either way is just as beautiful and satisfying. Her main decider: which side do you want to end up on, Queenstown or Milford?

The return trip is what put us off the Heaphy Track over summer. It had a little availability, but the bus back around cost almost as much as four nights of hut accommodation, so we didn't book it.

Emily had looked at the Heaphy too, and on short notice she couldn't get the logistics and the money sorted in time.

The Routeburn Track day by day

Emily walked it in late summer, so the temperatures weren't too brutal. The forecast was pretty atrocious, though, and the DOC ranger warned them they might have to stay an extra night. Overnight, the weather disappeared, and they got beautiful sunshine that wasn't too hot. Perfect conditions.

Day one

A fairly easy-ish day, relatively speaking. There's some uphill, nothing super extreme, and it's all through beautiful bush.

Day two

The longest day. You hike up to the highest point on the track, where there's a shelter. From there, a side trip takes you up an extra 300 metres, then you come back down to the shelter and carry on through the valley and down.

Emily rates the side trip as definitely worth doing, because the views are amazing. It does make an already long day more of an effort.

Day three

Much less uphill than day two. You head through the mountains, down into the bush and out near Milford.

A couple of people do the side trip to Key Summit on the last day. By then, Emily had reached her limit. Her brain really wanted to, her body said they probably shouldn't, and she listened to her body.

When I did the Key Summit hike, we followed the Routeburn for a little before it branched off, and the views from the top were incredible. I left wanting to come back and hike all the way over those mountains to Glenorchy.

Any regrets? Absolutely none for Emily. If anything, she wishes she'd started training a bit earlier, to make carrying the pack easier.

Pack weight, hut food and hiking snacks

Emily's pack was ten kilos. Staying in huts meant no tent or sleeping mat, so she needed her sleeping bag, clothes and cooking gear.

Because she was solo, she had to carry everything herself. Groups around her shared the load between them and could bring things like sandwich makings. If it took up too much space or weighed too much, it stayed home, so she was after the most calories for the least weight and space.

Her hut food:

• Dehydrated meals, which taste way more amazing after a long day of walking than anything else.
• Two-minute noodles for breakfast, because she is not a porridge person. Everyone else had their porridge, and she was sitting there with her noodles having a great old time.
• Nut bars, which fit into the little pockets on the front of her pack.
• Big Cookie Time cookies, a treat and a good energy hit, especially at the end of the day when you want hiking dessert.

On a school tramping trip when I was at high school, my group packed cereal for breakfast and noodles for lunch, then realised we'd only have a fire at breakfast. So we had noodles for breakfast and cereal for lunch. It totally worked. And scroggin gets old a couple of days in, so cookies are going on my next hike.

Huts, company and staying safe on your own

Getting adopted on day two

On her second day, as everyone was packing up to leave the hut, a group of women who were all friends of friends asked Emily if she wanted to walk with them. So she spent most of the day with them. She likes hiking by herself, and it was fun to meet new people, and everyone on the track and in the huts was super friendly.

What surprised her

She'd never stayed in huts or done a multi-day hike before, so she had no idea what to expect. She'd pictured wearing every piece of clothing she owned, and she was really warm and cosy in the huts. And nothing could have prepared her for the views. You see the pictures and everyone tells you it's going to be beautiful, and being there exceeds all of that.

Staying safe as a solo hiker

Safety was a learning curve for Emily. She read other people's blogs, followed people on Instagram who'd done it recently and paid attention to how fit they described themselves. The Mountain Safety Council has lots of good advice too. On the track, she carried extra food and all her wet weather gear, and listened to exactly what the DOC rangers said.

She reckons the Great Walks are a good place to start:

"I think that the Great Walks are actually a really awesome place to try out solo hiking because they are really populated."

You still shouldn't rely on other people for your own safety. It does give you peace of mind, compared with walks where you might be the only person out there.

I'd struggle with this part, because I often rely on Isaac to know the dangers. He's done a lot more hiking than me, especially in alpine environments. On a Great Walk, at least there are rangers at the huts and lots of other people around.

One thing we take for granted here: there are no dangerous animals to worry about. Emily met a woman from Canada in one of the huts who talked about how much easier hiking in New Zealand was, with no need to hang your food in a tree or carry bear spray.

Emily's advice and her next Great Walk

Emily's advice for anyone thinking about the Routeburn:

"if it is something that you want to do then you should definitely do it even if you are a little bit nervous or worried or never done a three day hike before … It's an experience that you will not forget and you will feel so proud of yourself once you get to the end of the track."

Put in some effort beforehand so you're in the right physical condition, and it's achievable. Looking back and knowing you did it is an amazing feeling.

To celebrate, she went for a stupidly expensive solo dinner at her hotel's restaurant, because once she got to the hotel, she wasn't going out again. She's never inhaled a meal so fast.

Top of Emily's bucket list is Stewart Island. A couple of friends have been, and the way they describe it makes it sound incredible. She's never been that far south. There's a Great Walk down there, if she can get a booking, and there are day walk options if she can't. Her plan is to keep an eye out for cancellations and go spontaneous again.

My only Great Walk so far is the Tongariro Northern Circuit, a circuit around Ngāuruhoe, a couple of years before we recorded. I always miss the bookings because they go so quickly, so I'm with Emily: cancellations it is.

Places from this episode

• Routeburn Track
• Glenorchy
• Milford
• Queenstown
• Key Summit
• Wellington
• Wānaka
• Heaphy Track
• Tongariro Northern Circuit
• Stewart Island

Follow Emily

• Instagram: @emily.intransit
• Blog: Emily in Transit, where there's a post about her Routeburn trek

More like this

• Having an Accident on the Routeburn and a Five Year Recovery Journey with Sarah Heffron
• Five Days, 85km on Abigail Hannah's First Solo Hike on the Old Ghost Road
• Ruapehu and Solo Tramping in the Backcountry with Hazel Phillips
• Hiking the Kepler Track in Fiordland with Dua

Until then, keep adventuring :)