It took Paulina Zäck 54 days, 9 hours, and 48 minutes to journey the Te Araroa (TA) path, New Zealand’s premier lengthy path, a time that set each a brand new girls’s self-supported and girls’s total quickest identified time (FKT).
She completed on the Cape Reinga Lighthouse on the northern tip of New Zealand’s North Island on the morning of March 27, 2025. Coming from Germany, Zäck bettered the earlier girls’s total report of 57 days, 12 hours, and 16 minutes by Brooke Thomas, which had been set in supported style in 2021.
Paulina Zäck set the ladies’s total quickest identified time on the Te Araroa path in a self-supported style, which means she carried every thing she wanted for a number of days between resupplies. All pictures courtesy of Paulina Zäck.
The 1,898-mile (3,054 kilometers) path travels the size of the 2 islands of New Zealand and is extensively thought to be one of many harder lengthy trails frequented by the thru-hiking group. It climbs and descends 142,000 toes (43,200 meters) of elevation. Nonetheless, even with carrying every thing she wanted to gasoline herself, keep secure, and sleep within the backcountry, Zäck coated a mean of practically 35 miles (56k) per day, together with her longest day being 54 miles (87k).
Beginning February 1, which is comparatively late within the season for the path, Zäck selected to journey northbound to flee the notoriously changeable climate of the South Island because the seasons shifted from summer time to fall. In finishing the path in a self-supported style, she didn’t have a crew and relied on industrial companies in cities and a pair of mail drops for meals resupply. She carried all of her personal gear, together with her longest stretch with out resupply being 5 days whereas on the South Island.
Zäck used lots of the backcountry huts scattered alongside the Te Araroa path for shelter.
With solely 60 days to finish the path, Zäck had the hope of an FKT in her sights from the beginning. However, she admitted in an Instagram submit earlier than beginning, “I’ve zero clue how this can play out, I’ve by no means achieved something like this earlier than. May very well be epic, might be a complete catastrophe. My physique? No concept the way it’ll maintain up. The path? Unforgiving. The chances? Stacked. So bear with me, something may occur.”
Zäck had an affordable quantity of thru-hiking expertise to fall again on as she traversed muddy trails, farm tracks, gravel and paved roads, and countless mountains and river crossings. 5 years in the past, she accomplished the TA going southbound, and he or she additionally hiked the Appalachian Path two years in the past. It’s additionally value noting that in 2022, she began a doctoral dissertation mission titled “Lengthy-Distance Mountain climbing. An Anthropological Examine on the Social and Cultural Follow of Trendy Pilgrimages.”
The Te Araroa follows every thing from overgrown path to gravel paths to paved roads on its traverse of New Zealand.
A part of her choice to go northbound this time round was to expertise the path in a brand new approach. She additionally stated in her write-up on the Quickest Recognized Time web site that she wished to get the harder sections of the path on the South Island achieved first. Nonetheless, the lengthy street miles of the North Island in the end proved essentially the most troublesome for her physique. Close to the tip, Zäck developed ache in her left calf and shin, however she was decided to not let it sluggish her down. She wrote on one among her near-daily Instagram updates, “Three extra days of working via it; no approach I’m taking one other break now. I can chill as a lot as I would like after this.”
Zäck writes of the ultimate miles, “I spent the ultimate hours working alongside the seashore within the blazing solar, singing to my coronary heart’s content material with my TA playlist, the soundtrack that had saved me going and motivated via each excessive and low of the previous weeks. My face nearly damage from smiling.”
Zäck having fun with a positive spell on the Te Araroa path.
In February 2025, Belgium’s Karel Sabbe reset the lads’s supported and males’s total FKT on the Te Araroa path. With a brand new benchmark set for girls now as properly, we may see an increase in recognition for FKT makes an attempt on this epic New Zealand path.
