{"id":566,"date":"2026-02-10T05:10:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T05:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/?p=566"},"modified":"2026-02-10T05:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T05:12:13","slug":"day-42-winding-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/2026\/02\/10\/day-42-winding-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 42, Winding down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

February 10, 2026
Frankton to Queenstown
TA km marker 2726.9 to 2735.0
Hiked today: 11.1 km<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning’s exercise was a pleasant walk around the edge of Lake Whakatipu from Frankton to Queenstown. We arrived about 10:30 and cruised the tourist trap shops in the centre of Queenstown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One job was to get replacement shoes for Ros, and another was to enjoy a world famous Fergburger (thanks Pete!). The queue was not too long and the burgers were great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We have been thinking for some days now that we will end our hike here at Queenstown, as it is convenient to get a flight back to Australia. Also we are less enthusiastic about the remainder of the trail which goes through more farming country and a notorious section of deep mud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are very satisfied with what we have done, including 650km of hiking (the total for the South Island Te Araroa is 1300km); hiking the commonly accepted hardest section (the Richmonds); surviving the commonly accepted hardest day on the trail (with snow) over the Waiau Pass; crossing the widest river on the official TA route (Ahuriri R); and going to the highest point on the TA (Stag Saddle). It was a pity to miss the Arthur’s Pass section, but we felt the high river levels were too risky for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So tomorrow we are flying early in the morning from here to Sydney. Thankyou to all of you who have posted encouraging comments to our blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"February 10, 2026Frankton to QueenstownTA km marker 2726.9 to 2735.0Hiked today: 11.1 km This morning’s exercise was a pleasant walk around the edge of Lake Whakatipu from Frankton to Queenstown. We arrived about 10:30 and cruised the tourist trap shops in the centre of Queenstown. One job was to get…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/20260210_11445915869583269141116795.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loudonweb.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}