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Hello all.
I was just wondering if anyone can tell me how much room you need to leave in your pack for your porter's gear. While I am sure that our porters may not consider everything we carry to be a necessity, surely they must take some gear with them. Do porters have a "group porter" that carries their own personal items?
Can anyone help me out here?
Adam, I seem to remember that we were advised to leave room for about 5 kilos of gear for the porter making the packs about 15kgs. They will adjust the pack to fit themselves and if there is no room in the pack they are very adept at tying things on. If they are walking back to Kokoda they generally take extra back for their families. Have fun, Libby
Yes, Libby you are so right. A pack should not weigh more than 15 kg. Each porter has around 5 kg of his own to add to the pack. If there is space, we suggest about 6-8 inches be left for them to put in a change of clothes. Other things they tie on the outside.
A group porter carries your food, his food and your personal porters food.
Out of curiosity, how many porters usually accompany a trekking group? One for each trekker and one group porter?
On our trek all but one of the trekkers had a porter, one trek leader and I think we had about 3 or 4 food porters. They generally walk ahead of the group so when you get to your next stop the kettle is already boiled! So we had 8 trekkers and 12 porters all up – a good sized group.
Depends on which trekking company you go with, we got rations packs which were 1 kg each, we got three to carry in our own packs, and these took up quite a bit of room, we had to scrunch ours down, biscuit & dip turned into crumbs! I had a porter called Burbon, and he just tied his stuff to the back of my pack, I had a pack cover for when it rained and it fitted over his stuff as well, he only took one set of clothes, the ones he wore, I carried a day pack, which weighed about 7 kgs. We all handed in the main (dried meal) everyone had the same, the 'hous cook' cooked it all up in one big pot and served it with rice, but what I found funny was the meri's of which ever village we were in arriving with the porters food, great bowls filled to the brim with Kau Kau, corn, carried on their heads, about 5 different courses! Burbon had done the track 5 times, Jimmy, our track leader had done it 99 times! I asked Burbon how much christmas he had ( his age) he thought for about 10 minutes, I thought he had forgotten the question, or was ignoring me, then he turned round, with this beaming smile and said 'six'! he was about 20 and had 1 meri (wife) and 2 kids. I couldn't tell you how many porters we had in our group, there were two groups of 15 & 16, each of us had a porter, except for 5 who carried their own packs, then there were about 6 more for each group, and fit! here you are puffing up the track like an old steam train, following the person in frount of you, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, not wanting to look up and see just what you are climbing, and here comes two or three porters, sick of trailing behind you, pass you, jogging up the mountain, great pots and pans clanging off their 20 odd kg packs, making it look like a sunday stroll! the porters are just angels, they never left us for a second, running past us up the track, to the difficult spots, so that they could help us over it. Even when we were camped at Isurava, we decided to go up to see Butch Bisset's plaque, ( we were walking back to Kokoda, not on to Ower's) about 20 minutes further on, about 10 minutes after we were gone, our porters caught up with us, even going for a walk they wouldn't leave us. I think they thought we were all lapun (old) !!
G'day,
The more I read and look at photos of people who have done the trek the more and more I am looking forward to it. I have not ever done something that I have had so much anticipation before the event….. From watching the porters seem to take it all in their stride literally. I read in the news that a new record was set by one of the Kokoda Trekking porters of running the track in 17 hours fifty something minutes… now thats FIT.Cheers
Xane
yes, you are correct, it was set by Brendan Buka a Kokoda Trekking (KTL) Porter who now holds the record for both directions.
Owers Corner to Kokoda set in August 2006 – time – 17 hours 49 minutes
Kokoda to Owers Corner set in August 2007 – time – 17 hours 20 minutesWith reference to the number of porters versus trekkers, like Donna mentioned it depends on how many carry and how many hire personal porters.
For example the trek just finished was the Kokoda Kids of which Brendan Buka was a personal porter, refer pic below – the guy with the axe in the ground. The guy in the background Lancelot Yauga was carrying his trekker up to Owers' Corner who could not walk due to blisters on his feet. Now this is a steep hill and a huge ask to be piggy backed!
There was 14 trekkers, 13 personal porters, 1 guide and 7 food porters
Pic 1. Brendan Buka at work as a personal porter
Pic 2. Brendan Buka arriving at Owers' Corner at the end of our race in 17 hours 20 minutes from the time he commenced in Kokoda at 7am the previous morning.
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