It took Paulina Zäck 54 days, 9 hours, and 48 minutes to travel the Te Araroa (TA) trail, New Zealand’s premier long trail, a time that set both a new women’s self-supported and women’s overall fastest known time (FKT).
She finished at the Cape Reinga Lighthouse at the northern tip of New Zealand’s North Island on the morning of March 27, 2025. Coming from Germany, Zäck bettered the previous women’s overall record of 57 days, 12 hours, and 16 minutes by Brooke Thomas, which had been set in supported fashion in 2021, as well as the mixed gender team record of 54 days, 13 hours, 58 minutes, and 26 seconds, set by Madison Wait and Tom Bartlett in 2024.
Paulina Zäck set the women’s overall fastest known time on the Te Araroa trail in a self-supported fashion, meaning she carried everything she needed for multiple days between resupplies. All photos courtesy of Paulina Zäck.
The 1,898-mile (3,054 kilometers) trail travels the length of the two islands of New Zealand and is widely regarded as one of the more difficult long trails frequented by the thru-hiking community. It climbs and descends 142,000 feet (43,200 meters) of elevation. Still, even with carrying everything she needed to fuel herself, stay safe, and sleep in the backcountry, Zäck covered an average of nearly 35 miles (56k) per day, with her longest day being 54 miles (87k).
Starting February 1, which is relatively late in the season for the trail, Zäck chose to travel northbound to escape the notoriously changeable weather of the South Island as the seasons shifted from summer to fall. In completing the trail in a self-supported fashion, she didn’t have a crew and relied on commercial services in towns and a pair of mail drops for food resupply. She carried all of her own gear, with her longest stretch without resupply being five days while on the South Island.
Zäck used many of the backcountry huts scattered along the Te Araroa trail for shelter.
With only 60 days to complete the trail, Zäck had the hope of an FKT in her sights from the start. But, she admitted in an Instagram post before starting, “I have zero clue how this will play out, I’ve never done anything like this before. Could be epic, could be a total disaster. My body? No idea how it’ll hold up. The trail? Unforgiving. The odds? Stacked. So bear with me, anything could happen.”
Zäck had a reasonable amount of thru-hiking experience to fall back on as she traversed muddy trails, farm tracks, gravel and paved roads, and endless mountains and river crossings. Five years ago, she completed the TA going southbound, and she also hiked the Appalachian Trail two years ago. It’s also worth noting that in 2022, she started a doctoral dissertation project titled “Long-Distance Hiking. An Anthropological Study on the Social and Cultural Practice of Modern Pilgrimages.”
The Te Araroa follows everything from overgrown trail to gravel paths to paved roads on its traverse of New Zealand.
Part of her decision to go northbound this time around was to experience the trail in a new way. She also said in her write-up on the Fastest Known Time website that she wanted to get the more difficult sections of the trail on the South Island done first. However, the long road miles of the North Island ultimately proved the most difficult for her body. Near the end, Zäck developed pain in her left calf and shin, but she was determined not to let it slow her down. She wrote on one of her near-daily Instagram updates, “Three more days of running through it; no way I’m taking another break now. I can chill as much as I want after this.”
Zäck writes of the final miles, “I spent the final hours running along the beach in the blazing sun, singing to my heart’s content with my TA playlist, the soundtrack that had kept me going and motivated through every high and low of the past weeks. My face almost hurt from smiling.”
Zäck enjoying a fine spell on the Te Araroa trail.
In February 2025, Belgium’s Karel Sabbe reset the men’s supported and men’s overall FKT on the Te Araroa trail. With a new benchmark set for women now as well, we could see a rise in popularity for FKT attempts on this epic New Zealand trail.
