From First Tramp to Paparoa and all the Great Walks with Nicola Harvie

Confession time. I've walked four Great Walks and I've never booked a single one. I'm terrible at planning, so someone else does it and I say, yep, put my name down.

When Nicola Harvie turned 21, she set herself a goal of nine Great Walks in nine years, and she finished a couple of years early. Then she paddled the Whanganui Journey, which made ten. She fell back in love with New Zealand during the 2020 lockdown, and now writes the kind of Great Walk planning guides I'll be leaning on when I finally book one myself.

Summer is usually Great Walk season, and when we recorded this, all the walks had recently reopened after storm damage on some of them. So we get into her booking tips, her two favourites and the Paparoa Track day by day (one I hadn't covered on the show yet). Plus her best tramping food, the Whanganui Journey and what getting outdoors looks like with little ones. Go on, have a listen.

In this episode

• How Nicola fell back in love with New Zealand
• Nine Great Walks in nine years
• How to book a Great Walk
• Milford Track and Lake Waikaremoana, Nicola's favourites
• Paparoa Track, day by day
• Tramping food and treats
• Whanganui Journey, the river Great Walk
• Day walks, biking and camping with little ones
• Nicola's New Zealand bucket list

How Nicola fell back in love with New Zealand

Nicola grew up an Aucklander on huge summer road trips with her family, tackling a couple of regions at a time and stopping somewhere new each night: a huge Northland roadie, a huge East Cape roadie and several around the South Island.

She's always been a bit travel mad, mostly about international travel, so she found the 2020 lockdown really hard. It made her fall back in love with her own backyard. She was desperate to start a travel blog, and New Zealand was the place she knew like the back of her hand. At a previous job it was a running joke: name a random town, and Nicola had been there.

She saw most of those places as a kid, so now she wants to see them again as an adult, in different seasons.

COVID was the catalyst for us too: the first time we went south was in 2020. And the more places I go, the more I want to go back and see them in a different season.

Nine Great Walks in nine years

When Nicola turned 21, she had nine years till she was 30 and wanted a good goal for them. There were nine Great Walks then, so nine walks in nine years felt like a good way to space them out. She was still new to tramping. She ticked them off at 27, a couple of years early, because she was part of a tramping family by then and suddenly they were hiking all the time.

Several of the walks were with a big group of her in-laws, their friends and their friends' kids. Her husband walked five of the ten with her before retiring from hiking (he'd prefer to run them). She did two with a close friend, and one solo, after the friend she'd planned to go with pulled out.

I've done four: Waikaremoana, Tongariro, the Abel Tasman and the Milford, and I'd love to do them all one day. All of the tracks and all of the scenery are amazing. They're Great Walks for a reason.

How to book a Great Walk

Some Great Walks sell out almost instantly. Nicola booked the Milford the year before the COVID lockdown, when demand was slightly lower. It was still pretty high. Her tips for booking day:

• Be online the moment bookings open. She took a break at work to do it.
• Sort your login in advance, password issues included, so you're logged in on the DOC site with no problems.
• Write it all down. Days and nights, which hut on which exact night, your dates in and out, and your direction. Then once you're in, it's click, click, click.
• Split up for big groups. More than one of them tried at the same time, with a plan already made: if only one person got through, the people most desperate to go took the spots, and if both did, the wider group went.
• Have plan B ready. If you miss out, there's no time to discuss it. Know your second set of dates, or that you'll walk the other direction, or who will give up their spot.

They'd always aim for public holidays, and somehow they always got them. Everyone goes at Easter and Labour Weekend, so Nicola's advice is to be flexible about when in the season you go.

Her blog has extensive posts on each Great Walk, including how the transport works point to point (shuttles, transfers, boats), who to contact and what it might all cost.

Milford Track and Lake Waikaremoana, Nicola's favourites

Nicola always puts two ahead of the rest. Number one is the Milford, predictable as that might be, because they had clear autumn weather at the top of the pass, and getting up to the summit was the most magical morning. They had some rain too, and she was glad of it:

"We still had a bit of wet weather, because you do want a bit. You want the waterfalls to come alive. You want to see Fiordland as Fiordland."

Second is Lake Waikaremoana, because it exceeded her expectations the most. She remembered the lake from a childhood visit as grey and dismal. This time it was crystal clear after a random freak snowstorm, and having switched direction for logistics, they could carry on as normal, with patches of snow in the forest and the sunlight glistening through.

I walked Waikaremoana over Easter weekend, and the first day up the ridge was so wet and clouded in. I didn't mind, because we'd done that section the year before under bluebird skies, so I knew what it was supposed to look like.

Paparoa Track, day by day

Nicola walked the Paparoa Track in April 2021, when it was brand new and really hard to get a booking on. When a space opened up on a trip with two friends she often went waterfall hunting with, she knew how lucky she was. She'd only just finished the Routeburn and was already pretty tired, and she found it quite challenging.

Getting there and relocating your car

They met up in Christchurch, where one of the group had a car, and drove across the pass. The recommended direction starts at the Smoke-ho car park out of Blackball, about 25 minutes from Greymouth, and heads north to Punakaiki.

There are shuttle companies that do vehicle relocations, and that's what they used: they parked at the Smoke-ho car park, and when they reached Punakaiki, the car was there waiting. Some companies store your car somewhere secure, and some relocate it and leave it, which might not be as secure.

I used a vehicle relocation on the Milford, and you get your car back at the end with all your gear (and pre-packed snacks) still in it.

Huts and distances

The Paparoa is 55 kilometres, and Nicola walked it over three days and two nights (you could add a fourth day). You can bike it too, and struggling up the hills on sore legs on day one, she did wonder, why am I not biking this?

They followed the recommended plan, with nights at Moonlight Tops Hut and Pororari Hut. It skips the first hut, Ces Clark Hut, because otherwise day two all the way to Pororari is a 29-kilometre day.

• Smoke-ho car park to Moonlight Tops Hut. A good uphill day, around 20 kilometres and coming up to eight hours of walking.
• Moonlight Tops Hut to Pororari Hut. Nearly as big at 19 kilometres, with a gentle downhill.
• Pororari Hut to Punakaiki. Shorter, at 16 kilometres.

You come out right across the road from Punakaiki Beach Camp, where they stayed: cross the road, hot shower. The village is only a kilometre away.

Nicola points out that the Abel Tasman is 53 kilometres and people do it in four days, so she reckons four days would be sensible on the Paparoa too.

Views and weather

Nicola really rated the views: pretty, pretty, really gorgeous. Day one had beautiful weather, day two was cloudy and day three was too much. To get any dry weather on the West Coast, they felt pretty lucky.

Their group is a bit notorious for leaving late in the day, so they reached Ces Clark Hut in the early evening, with gorgeous views across the ranges and the national park, then tracked along the ridgeline to Moonlight Tops at sunset:

"there was this beautiful cloud inversion … sunsets dripping through, clouds below us, very, very pretty."

Day two has a lot of ridgeline, winding through the area where the Pike River Mine disaster happened. Day three is the day it poured. They were drowned rats by the end, and the group chat was renamed Never Tramping Again. Which is obviously not true.

When I walked the Old Ghost Road, the first night at the first hut was torrential, and I thought, cool, I'm going to be wet for five days. It was fine. Good raincoat, you'll be fine.

Sharing the track with cyclists

Cyclists weren't a big deal for Nicola. Lots came through on day one, mainly a school group on an excursion that weekend, and there's enough room for everyone. Once they'd passed, they were gone, so it wasn't an issue at all, apart from a bit of envy.

I didn't have any issues with cyclists on the Old Ghost Road either. They're usually super courteous, and you move to the side. The only time I was wary was walking alone with music or a podcast on, because I had to be conscious I might not hear them coming.

Tramping food and treats

Ask Nicola for her number one piece of gear and all that comes to mind is food. She always takes dessert, which is her in-laws' influence: they always bring the cheese and the wine. They pack light, and there's always room for an appetiser or a dessert, because those little treats at the end of each day make a big difference to getting through.

Her go-tos:

• Steamed puddings. Boil some water and bathe the pudding in it.
• Dehy risottos with dehydrated vegetables. They still need 20 minutes of cooking, so that's a lot of gas.
• A cup of soup as an entrée. So light, and you only need boiling water.
• Packet pancakes, warmed in the pan and topped with bacon and banana.
• Garlic pita breads, already stuffed with garlic. A quick toast in a pan makes a beautiful appetiser (they once stunk out a hut with them).
• Uncle Tobys oat bars, literally oats in solid form, for breakfast on the go.

The oat bars are for mornings when she wants a bit more sleep and struggles to get out of the hut as quickly as the others, and they mean no breakfast dishes.

We've had those dehy risottos heaps doing van life, because they're so quick and easy. I'm one of the slower ones out of the huts too. On a long day I start with a One Square Meal bar (apricot is my flavour), which has enough calories to get me to lunch.

Whanganui Journey, the river Great Walk

Finishing the Abel Tasman ticked off the nine walks of Nicola's original goal. That left the Whanganui Journey, the Great Walk done by river. Twice it nearly happened: one trip never made it out of the group chat, and another time she and a friend drove down and the river was too high.

Once she was pregnant, she knew that if she wanted to do it, she needed to do it now, because she wasn't taking the baby down the river. Having nearly done it twice was also a catalyst to get it done, so she could say she'd done them all.

She went with her husband and four friends when she was 26 weeks pregnant. Any later wouldn't have been great for her, and having already missed out off-season because of the water levels, she wanted to go as far into the better weather as she safely could. She felt incredibly safe the whole time.

Going early in the season, they had the best weather, and the river was really flowing. They were cruising. A colleague who went later in January came back saying she'd misled him: the water was so low that they had to work really hard for three days. You can't fully predict it, and she feels very fortunate.

I'd never thought about the river's flow. We've tried several times to get a group together for the Whanganui, and one day we'll get there. We're keen to do it in kayaks, because they go a bit faster than canoes.

There are now 11 Great Walks, and Nicola hasn't done the Hump Ridge Track.

Day walks, biking and camping with little ones

Nicola is mum to a toddler, with her second baby due any day when we recorded. Her outings with her little one so far have been a couple of front-pack walks of a couple of hours, and front-packing seven kilos was too much.

Friends are walking the Greenstone Caples Track in January, and for the first time she has real FOMO. She'll join them for day one with the little ones:

"It doesn't have to look the same. There's still multi-day walks I want to do. But they might come later and they might look different and it's okay. … I think we're probably in a day walk season of our lives and that's all right."

Those later trips might mean one night max, or biking a track with the kids on the front. And now that she's in Central Otago, places she'd once have flown to are a short drive away, so they can be day walks.

A friend bikes with their toddler in a front seat, with their own handlebars, and the baby strapped into a carrier on the back, asleep. With so many cycle trails, Nicola's keen to do the same once her little one is old enough.

Camping is another way. When they camped with their baby, they had lots of friends along: built-in babysitters. You're still outdoors, with no real agenda and not asking a lot of yourselves. Nicola reckons a van, or some way to avoid the tent, makes it quite realistic, because everything stays packed and ready to go.

I think it's so good to normalise that life after kids won't look the same as life before, because every child is different and every family is different.

Nicola's New Zealand bucket list

There's still plenty on Nicola's list:

• Lake Alta, at the top of the Remarkables. She'd love to do that climb.
• The Far North. She's only been once, as a kid, and friends' trips up there have her thinking she needs to get back to those beaches.
• Ski fields down south. She loves snow sports and has only done Ruapehu.
• Abel Tasman, again. She'd go back in a heartbeat for a slower-paced holiday, with the kayaking as well as the walking.

I highly, highly recommend the kayaking. It's how I first experienced the Abel Tasman, and it's a beautiful way to see it.

Places from this episode

• Paparoa Track
• Smoke-ho car park
• Blackball
• Greymouth
• Moonlight Tops Hut
• Ces Clark Hut
• Pororari Hut
• Punakaiki
• Punakaiki Beach Camp
• Pike River Mine
• Christchurch
• West Coast
• Milford Track
• Fiordland
• Lake Waikaremoana
• Routeburn Track
• Abel Tasman
• Tongariro
• Whanganui Journey
• Hump Ridge Track
• Greenstone Caples Track
• Old Ghost Road
• Northland
• East Cape
• Central Otago
• Lake Alta
• The Remarkables
• Far North
• Ruapehu

Follow Nicola

• Blog: Following Faultlines
• Instagram: @followingfaultlines
• Facebook: Following Faultlines

More like this

• Tramping the Heaphy Track from Karamea to Collingwood with Jacq Nesbit
• Hiking the Kepler Track in Fiordland with Dua
• Summer as a DOC Ranger on Stewart Island and Women in Trades with Brooke Thompson
• Southland's Five Great Walks in Five Days with Simon Patton

Until then, keep adventuring :)