te-araroa-data

The Te Araroa Trust publishes its trail data as a KMZ file. However, most GPS devices work better with GPX files. So this page has built a GPX from that KMZ file. In fact, this also orders the individual tracks in walking order, with elevation, huts, campsites, a datasheet with every waypoint on it as well as a resupply data sheet that only contains points were you can resupply. The official data does not contain these, hopefully they are helpful.

2026-27 release (v45) built 23 October 2026 Source on GitHub

This follows what the TA trust published, but it is not the trust.

A scheduled job checks the trust's download page every Monday and rebuilds when the published files change, so this is not a frozen snapshot. But it still needs manual review and can get out of date.

The resupply data is the exception: it is researched by hand, last revised 8 September 2026, and it does not update itself at all.

Before you walk, get the current files from teararoa.org.nz and read the trust's own trail notes and closure notices. Hut, water and resupply details decay faster than the route does, so you might want to double check them against more recent data and reports.

3,073 kmOfficial length

35,441Route points

656Waypoints

79Sections

8 mChainage error

Cape Reinga → Bluff

Zoom in for huts, campsites, resupply and turnoffs

Simplified for the web to 7,101 points. Huts and campsites in green, resupply in orange, and the ringed markers are where this direction starts and finishes. The six dashed links along the route are the places the walking route stops and starts again; click one to see what crosses it. The 70 small ringed markers on the route are turnoffs — where you leave the trail for somewhere it does not pass — each tied by a faint line running away from the route to the place it serves. The published GPX has the full 35,441-point geometry.

Why it exists

Both official files are public, and the GPX — the one most tools reach for — is the weaker of the two:

	official GPX	official KMZ
Track points	28,027	35,987
Elevation	none	every vertex
Track order	alphabetical	chainage
Huts / campsites	none	184, with attributes
Section names	none	every segment
Bypasses / no-camping	none	13 + 353

So the build reads the KMZ, uses the GPX only to check its work, and writes ordinary GPX and CSV. It then projects all 3,058 official km markers onto the assembled route: mean error 8 m, which is to say the interpolated chainage reproduces the trust's own markers essentially exactly.

The official data also contains no resupply at all — no towns, shops or supermarkets anywhere in the KMZ. 82 resupply points were researched by hand to fill that gap.

Download Southbound

These follow the switch above the map. Files whose name ends -sobo or -nobo come in both directions; the other two are the same either way. A northbound sheet is not the southbound one read from the bottom — every leg's ascent and descent swap over, so the climbing figures genuinely differ.

	21 tracks (7 for the main route, one per stretch you can walk, plus ferry connectors and 13 bypasses) and 656 typed waypoints, in walking order, among them a turnoff on the route for each of the 70 sites the trail does not pass. Elevation throughout.
	266 sites in trail order: km, official km, section, elevation, leg distances and ascent, any break the leg crosses, bunks, water, booking, phone, email, hours.
	The route through `gpx-tools`' datasheet: every waypoint with running distance, ascent and descent, measured one walkable stretch at a time.
	The same datasheet cut down to the points where you can resupply.
	The 79 official sections with their km ranges, counted in this direction and in the trust's own chainage.
	353 restricted-camping polygons. No chainage, so the same file either way.
	Every GIS attribute per site, plus sections, ferry connectors, route gaps, and the SHA-256 of the source files this was built from. Always in the trust's southbound chainage; northbound km is `officialLengthKm - km`.
all files →	Both directions, side by side.

What you might build on it

The waypoints carry a GPX <type>, so a hut is clearly labeled. Every site has an official trail km, which makes it very easy to answer questions like "what is between km 1,200 and km 1,340", or how far is it to the next water source. Sensible things to do with that: itinerary planners that schedule by hut rather than by distance, resupply calculators, elevation profiles per section, or simply loading the GPX into a watch that refused the KMZ.

Corrections to the resupply data are the most useful contribution anyone can make — that file is hand-built and it decays. But if you find any inaccuracies or areas for improvement, please Open an issue.