A man who hiked more than 12,500 kilometres across America, setting a speed record, is now going to attempt to traverse New Zealand in record time on the Te Araroa trail.
Billy Meredith, whose trail name is "Wahoo", completed the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide in just over seven-and-a-half months in 2023, faster than it had ever been done before.
"I was averaging about 52km a day for 234 days in a row."
The feat is known as the Calendar Year Triple Crown, something fewer than 20 hikers had done when Meredith set out.
Once that challenge was over, he got to thinking about what next. After a couple of months of recovery at home in Atlanta, Georgia, he flew to New Zealand.
"I walked across America three times in 2023 so it just felt kinda right to see a different country," he said.
"I was ready to venture outside of America a little bit and I had seen so many images of New Zealand in magazines and online and I'd always just had this bug to get here."
For the past 10 months, he has been living in Nelson, working at pizzeria and brewery Eddyline. He chose Nelson as his base because of the access to the outdoors.
"The Te Araroa is the premier long-distance trail here in New Zealand, so I came over here thinking I might do it and maybe would go for the fastest known time but I wasn't 100% sure. I didn't really want to think about thru-hiking when I had just finished hiking for seven-and-a-half months."
The Triple Crown had been a test of endurance, Meredith said, and he decided to give Te Araroa a go as it was a chance to push himself to his absolute limit, to see what he was made of.
In the past few weeks, he had done the Heaphy, Paparoa, Old Ghost Road and Abel Tasman tracks in preparation for the big event.
"It is tough to train for these kind of things without actually doing it ... there is no simulating a seven-week adventure."
Meredith said he would be doing the trail self-supported, which meant he could not accept any help that was not available to everyone else.
Despite this, he had his sights set on beating the overall (supported) record - currently held by New Zealander George Henderson who completed the trail in 49 days, 14 hours and 27 minutes in 2020.
He would have further competition this season, with Belgian ultrarunner Karel Sabbe also attempting to log the shortest-ever traverse of Te Araroa with the support of a team.
"It's exciting to know we are both going to be out there and it's been fun following along with his crew on social media.
"The current record had been standing for five years and it is just kind of funny we both had our sights set on this trail, which in the grand scheme of things is a lesser-known trail to the world so it's great that both of us can highlight and showcase the incredible landscape in New Zealand."
Meredith was aiming to complete the trail in a "really ambitious" 45 days, which worked out to be about 67.5km per day.
"With these things anything can happen and that's just part of it - injury, weather - it's not like a marathon or a race where the finish line is in a few hours or even the next day. Your lifestyle is literally the race and you are living the adventure.
"I can't think about finishing the record because if I think about it, it's just way too overwhelming when I'm completely exhausted and gassed at the end of the day to think there's six more weeks. You just have to focus on the next day."
Along the way, Meredith wanted to raise $50,000 for Forest & Bird. He chose the independent, non-profit conservation organisation as it aligned with his values, working to protect New Zealand's environment.
Meredith's workplace, Eddyline, had produced a beer called Trail Magic in support of his record attempt, with all proceeds going to Forest & Bird.
Te Araroa's increasing popularity
There were a record number of people on the trail this year, with nearly 2000 people registered and another 1000 estimated to be on the trail, Te Araroa chief executive Matt Claridge said.
"That's just the beauty of the legend of Te Araroa, it's grown through word of mouth and there's a through-hiking movement around the world bigger than what there is in New Zealand, but it is growing."
He said most people took four to five months to complete it, though some did it in three, or less.
"The thing with Te Araroa is you walk your own walk, some people want to walk 30-40km a day, some people want to walk 20km a day with a day off more often than others and it just comes down to what each person's disposition and objective is. A lot of people walk the trail to emotionally heal, or to just find themselves."
Increasing patronage came with a need for more investment, so the trust asked walkers for a donation of $5 a day, which equated to 32 cents a kilometre, to help with the upkeep of the trail, Claridge said.
"That's a drop in the bucket, really, when we look at the maintenance requirements of the trail off public conservation estate, which is 1200km. We need in the order of $900,000 to $1 million in order to just maintain, let alone develop the trail.
"We use that to eradicate wasps, to develop a new bridge in the Whanganui region and other big assets that trail needs to progress to make sure that it lives up to a little bit of iconic status, worthy of being a tourism symbol. So all of that's really important."
Developing the huts, campsites and areas off the public conservation estate was very important to the future of the trail, he said.
