Running out of Gas

Once we finally got out of Auckland, we drove down to Taupo/Taurangi to see about doing the Tongariro Crossing, which is an alpine pass that is said to be the best one day hike in the country. When we got to Taurangi, we checked the weather and reallized that there would be about a week of bad weather, and one good day to do the crossing after this week of bad weather. We decided to drive to Whirinaki Forest and do a 4 day hike there, then make it back to Taurangi to do the crossing in the good weather.


We drive down to where we are supposed to get off the highway and make our way to the trail head. We have about a 30 kilometer drive on old, dirt logging roads before we get to the trail head. Frankly, we had no clue where we were going.


The drive up was kind of an adventure in itself and a lot of fun. We had grabbed some beer on the way out of town that day and seeing as we were on some old logging roads and there was no chance of seeing any cops, we couldn't help but crack open a few bottles on the way up. I know what your thinking. Beer, old dirt roads at night w/ no signs and 3 dudes that had no idea where they were going. The beer had nothing to do w/ us getting lost...I promise.

Well, it gets dark, the map we have has no road names (which didn't really matter since the dirt roads had no names), and the signs to the trail head were pretty hard to spot in the dark. I took a pretty funny, ridiculous video while we were driving (I will post it ASAP). We were pretty lost, hadn't eaten dinner, and over half way through the case of beer that we had bought. It just so happened that I turned the camera on right before we found the road we were looking for.

Well, after we found the road, finished our beer, and thought everything was OK...we got lost again. I'm telling you we were WAY out there on roads that NEVER get used. We apparently missed another sign and drove around some more before we found where we were going and stopped for the night. At this point, we had wasted a lot of gas and had about 2 liters (half a gallon) left. We were about 60 km (about 35 miles) away from the nearest petrol station so we knew we were in trouble.

The next morning, we decide that we will start out on the hike and figure out the gas situation later. The trail was a loop, and we were at the very southern tip of it. About 7 km (4 miles) north of the top of the loop was a little logging town called Minginui. We hiked for about 3 hours, enjoying the dense forest and huge trees before we got to one of the many back country huts that the Department of Conservation (DOC) has in most of the parks in NZ. We were hoping that when we got to this hut there would be someone (maybe even a DOC official) there that could give us some advice on where to get gas, but the hut was empty.

After some arguing and figuring out what the hell we were going to do, we made a decision. If we did the hike as planned, then we would end up back at the van with no food and no gas. Moreover, once we did run the van dry, we would be forced to hike out to the highway (could have been like 15 miles), hitchhike to the nearest gas station (25 more miles), then hitchhike back to the dirt road and hike back to the van. These dirt roads were hard to navigate because they all looked the same and had no signs. We would have been hiking, w/ no food, on roads that we knew were hard to follow and were completely empty of any humans. That is not ideal.

It was Monday afternoon. We decided that Cam and I would make the trip up north to Minginui find gas, and hike back to camp all in one day. Then we would hike out on Wednesday, back to the van (hopefully w/ some gas). Cam and I knew that we'd have to hitch rides, which is impossible to do w/ three people. Also, we needed someone to stay at the Van in case Cam and I never came back.

This was the best option because Minginui was the closest town, even though it was on the other side of a huge forest. Also, if we got gas on Tuesday, then we would still be able to get back to the Tongariro crossing in time to hike it in good weather.

So, Tuesday morning Nate hiked back to the van and Cam and started north. We took our tents and food w/ us and set up camp about 2 hours hike north of the hut. We were each carrying 30 lb. packs, and there was a vicious ascent on this hike to the camping spot that we had picket out. Both of our legs were burning like hell and we had only begun our journey to Minginui.

We set up camp, had a quick lunch, and kept heading north. Now we had a camp to leave our packs at, which was a few miles closer to Minginui than the hut was. We would hopefully sleep there for the night, but that was a long way off.

After lunch, we kept heading north. We even jogged a few times, trying to make good time so that we would get to Minginui early enough to find a petrol station or someone who could give us a ride to one. We also did not want to have to hike back in the dark.

We made it to the north end of the loop by 2pm. The guide and the signs on the hiking track said that it would take about 5 hours to go from the hut to the north end of the trail...we did it in about 4 hrs, including the hour it took to set up camp and eat lunck. We were making great time but were already tired as hell and weren't even half way done w/ our trip yet.

We rested for a while, then set off on the road to Minginui. We walked about 4 miles (for a total of 10 for the day) up to town, and caught a ride from a dude on a 4 wheeler for the last quarter mile into town.

Once we got into town, we saw a guy named Willy, who was trying to catch a wild horse (yes this was in the middle of "town"). I could see that he was busy, but didn't think, or care, about the horse. I was tired and needed some petrol.

Willy was a super nice Maori man who had 9 cildren. He was a logger, and had been living in Minginui for a long time. He told us a lot about the town, and the history of logging in NZ.
He drove us around town looking for gas, but no one had any and there was some kind of safety mechanism on his van that wouldn't allow us to syphon any out of it. One place that we went looking for gas was apparently a friend of his because they struck up a fairly long conversation. Cam and I were sitting in his van, waiting for him. The van was running and I came really close to jumping in the driver seat and stealing the thing so we could drive up to the closest gas station and get some gas, but I figured that would be bad karma. We finally convinced Willy to take us up to Murapura, where the closest petrol station was. This was about 35 km away from Minginui, so it was kind of a drive.

Willy was a crazy driver....i thought we were going to die a few times. Also, he had this habit of stopping in the middle of the road, right around blind turns! He kept seeing friends of his sitting on the side of the road drinking after they had just got off work, and he kept stopping and talking to them w/o even pulling off the road. If a truck had come around one of those turns, we would have been toast.

Anyways, we got 8 liters of petrol, and got back to Willy's house. We had to stop at his house and pour the gas from his red gas tank into a 6 liter water container that we had found at the hut, and a 2 liter milk jug that willy had. This would make it a little easier to carry, and they wouldn't let us fill up anything but a red gas tank at the petrol station. Also, we had to switch vehicles because Willy's wife did not want him taking her minivan down the dirt road back to the trail head.

Cam and I, Willy and his wife, and their 4 kids all jumped into an old 4 runner and headed down the dirt road back to the trail. We hung out there for a little while and talked. Then cam and I started hiking back south to camp. We got back and ate dinner before night fall.

By days end, we had hiked 20 miles, rode .25 miles on a 4 wheeler, about 45 miles in a minivan, and another 4 in a 4 runner. Most of the 20 miles of the hike we were carrying tents, food, petrol, or all of the above. It was a long day but I kept thinking back to my cross country days, and the fact that my parents had done marathons before. If they could do 26 miles then I could do 20, even if it was carrying lots of shit and hiking up and down hills in the woods.

We made it back to the van the next day (Wednesday). Man, that was the worst part of the whole ordeal. The last few miles of hiking back to the van were all up hill and we were carrying our packs, tents, and the petrol. Also, it was dumping rain. It sucked!!!

We got to the van, got in and just started laughing. Mission accomplished. We had gotten enough petrol to at least get back to some form of civilization. We went to sleep and hoped the next day would be sunny.

It was a beautiful day on Thursday...we layed out all our gear in the sun so that it could dry off from the storm that we hiked in the day before. We ate breakfast, and drove back to the highway, straight to the bar!! We thought that we deserved a celebration!!

Thanks to Willy and his family...Amazing people with huge hearts. Without you guys, we would probably still be in that damn forest somewhere, or dead on the side of an old dirt road up in the hills of Whirinaki! Thank you!