Five Passes Route

Six full days of the classic Five Passes track (i.e. w/out Lake Nerine), done counter-clockwise.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous, thus our experience would not reflect the real difficulty of the track. 6 days is more or less safe bet for mixed weather, but can easily extend to 8 or more in adverse conditions. Expert folk can do the track in 3-4 days in perfect weather, but that would include ~8-9h walking days (and what's the point, really).

The track is mostly marked up until the end of forest edge on Beans Burn, and after the Park pass. The alpine section in between requires navigation skills and GPS can be very handy, especially for open tussock grass plains. Look for cairns (piles of stones) to mark where to cross rivers or scree sides.
Note, the track diversion at Hidden falls creek is a GPS glitch.

Standard hiking equipment required - a tent, sleeping bags, gas burner etc. There are a few bivys along the way, but a tent is absolutely required as a safety precaution. Fiery Col would require crampons if done anywhere before Jan or in late autumn (we still had to carefully go through a few snowy sections). Be prepared to cross lots of rivers / streams, especially when wet. Beans Burns confluence can actually be very hard to cross when rainy.

Water is abundant and clean. The standard topo map is slightly outdated in terms of streams (some do not seem to exist anymore) or tree line on Rockburn banks.

Sandflies. There are much more of them below the treeline. A campfire helps, but be extremely careful as the grass around can be quite dry.

The scenery is unbelievable. Much more impressive / diverse than say Routeburn-Greenstone track. Plenty of rabbits, a few Kea's and Kaka's

Transport to/fro the Routeburn shelter via transit coaches.

No cell coverage, so an SOS beacon would not hurt - can be rented from DOC in Queenstown. We have seen a few people on the track, but I suspect it was partly because of an excellent weather window.

To be clear - this is nowhere near the Great Walks in terms of difficulty. Navigation / river crossing / scrambling / snow / flooded areas / steep slopes