What have I been doing and what is next.

Hi everyone

Yes I am still alive. I am sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while but to be honest I have not been doing anything interesting. After finishing PCT in Sep 2019 I went back to NZ and was travelling in my campervan.

I designed a thru hike of the North Island Ranges from Wellington to East Cape. I started that in March 2020 but was interupted by the nationwide Covid 19 Lockdown. I recommenced in Oct 2020 but was forced to stop at the 500km mark when I fell down a cliff and hurt my knee. I was out of action for 6 months as I waited to get my knee injury diagnosed and then for the bone bruise to heal.

I made a full recovery and started doing trail running which was going well until I got a calf injury which I struggled to recover from. Nothing seemed to work and eventually after not exercising most of my calf muscle withered away which seemed to solve the issue.

It is only in the last couple of months that I have been able to walk and run pain free. That was a long time of not exercising and eating poorly resulting in a terrible state of fitness and a big weight gain. I also have been staying in one location as I have been renovating a house in slow time and have been getting itchy feet.

Like often happens with major decisions in my life I randomly thought it was time to do another thru hike. I figure and a good long walk would get me back in shape and ease my ichy feet. As I am impatient I needed a hike that I could start in the next few months which meant going to a sticking to the southern hemisphere so I decided on Australia.

I looked at the long trails in Australia. The longest is the Bicentennial National Trail at 5,330km but this is a multiuse trail for horses and mountain bikes and has a lot of road walking. The next longest was the Heysen Trail in South Australia at 1100km and the Bibbulmun Track in Western Australia at 1000km. I decided to do both.

I knew the BibbulmunTrack was well maintained and had less elevation than the Heysen Trail so I decided to do that first to get my trail fitness then head to the Heysen Trail. Spring is the best time to walk the Bibbulmun Track so I decided on 1 Sep as the start date. I have to complete the track in 6 weeks so that I can make it in time to beat the fire ban closure dates on the Heysen Trail.

Decision made I started planning and I will cover more on the two trails and my planning for them in the next posts.

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