Easter on Mt. Taranaki

Here in New Zealand, Easter is a four-day weekend (Good Friday and Easter Monday off). So, Jen and I decided that it had been far too long since we had inflicted a session of horrible, multiple-day misery upon ourselves for the sake of getting something to post on this blog. The resulting plan was to prove our muchiness with a four-day tramp in Egmont National Park, home to Mt. Taranaki:




View Mt. Taranaki in a larger map

We left Auckland in reasonably good time, but got tied up in traffic, so we ended up getting to the Dawson Falls Visitor Centre a little later than intended. This was not a problem, as we only had a an hour and a half hike to get to our hut for the first night. With plenty of time to spare, we decided to go take the five minute detour to see the falls, which were quite pretty:



Unfortunately, the falls were at the bottom of a ridiculously steep set of stairs in varying levels of disrepair. We also discovered that we had done a poor job of packing (heavy stuff should go on the bottom), and both of us were in a fair amount of misery right from the start.

Fortunately, this was a very short hike and we were soon treated to some spectacular views of the mountain from the deck in front of Waingongoro Hut. There was only other person at the hut that night: Brian, from San Diego, who was three weeks into a year-long trip around the world (we were very jealous). We shared tramping horror stories (his were much better) and found out that he was going to be going to the same hut we were on the following evening.



That night the sky cleared and before the moon came out we were treated to a truly spectacular star-scape. We live in the city, so our star gazing is normally limited to a handful of the brightest that manage to break through the haze and the light pollution. It is good to get away sometimes, to be reminded that there is a cost to living with the conveniences of modern life. Sadly, our trusty, loyal point and shoot camera was not up to the task of capturing the night sky, so you will just have to take our word for it.

The following morning, we had our first successful experiment for the weekend: bacon for breakfast. On the last morning of trip to Kai Mai, some other people in the hut had freshly cooked bacon for breakfast while we worked our way through some freeze dried yogurt and muesli. We thought, at the time, that that was particularly cruel and unfair of the other trampers and so decided to bring our own this time and see if it would work out well. It did. The only downside was the bacon grease at clean up time, but that was only a minor inconvenience compared to hitting the trail with bacon power fueling your hiking.

After breakfast, we completely repacked our backpacks. Heavy stuff goes on the bottom, light stuff on the top. Heavy stuff goes in Scott's pack, light stuff goes in Jen's pack. This took a fair amount of time, but was well worth it in terms of making the rest of the trip survivable.

We rolled back into the Dawson Falls Visitor Centre around 12:30, had a quick lunch and dropped of the previous night's rubbish in the car. Since the visitor centre was open now (we got to the park after it closed on Friday), I went in to ask about how difficult it would be to summit. You see, the plan was to head up to Syme Hut, which was above the scrub line on one of the secondary peaks of Mt. Taranaki.

The girl working the counter helpfully told me that it was about two hours each way from Syme Hut, but that it was a pretty difficult route and there was no marked trail. There was optimistic talk about waiting until the morning to see what the weather was like (as there is little point in summitting if the mountain is covered in clouds). We set off on the trail and made pretty good time. The trail was fairly relentless in its insistence that we were not high enough, and so a vast majority of the time we were heading up hill.

We were amused to find this bench, with a very picturesque view of the mountain. The Kiwis are very proud of Sir. Hillary, as you can see:



Or, as Brian rephrased that evening:

Pause for a moment, to bask in the awesomeness that is Sir Edmund Hillary

And here is Jen looking joyous at the prospect of more "up":



The problem, you see, is the stairs. The combination of steep slopes and heavy rain fall means that there are steps built into all of the trails on Mt. Taranaki. The steps are usually irregularly spaced and rather high: anything from a 6 to 18 inch rise on each step. The portion of the trail that we were on was pretty much exclusively steps. Steps that went on for a very long time. Jen started counting after a rest and got up to 1736 before we got to the top of the last set of stairs.



We rested briefly at the top of the stairs before heading up the mountain, into the cloud. This is pretty much the next kilometer and two hours of our lives:



That post that is sticking out of the ground next to me was one of the trail markers up the scree field. They were few and far between and helpfully colored light grey, which was good for picking them out of the haze against a grey rock backdrop. There were several occasions when we could not actually see the next marker, but had to proceed on anyway, as daylight was burning.

Several people passed us going down, and, in typical Kiwi fashion, kept giving us terrifically useful information such as "oh, it's just a wee while more!" and "don't worry, you'll make it before night fall". Thanks. At one point, we had to have one of the kind people going down the mountain take my water bottle down to Jen, as she was out and I had all of the reserves (as water is heavy).

So, after two hours of the most difficult, physically draining anything we have ever done, we made it to the top and received our reward:







Syme Hut itself was quite cozy, with eight of the ten bunks filled, but not too crowded. Everyone was in good spirits that evening as we prepared our dinners. While we were waiting for the water to boil for our freeze dried meal, Brian, whom we had met the previous night at Waingongoro hut, shared with us his recipe for the best food ever:

Start by walking for 6 hours, and then pretty much anything will do

After dinner, we bore witness to the sort of spectacular sunset that is common up on a mountain above the clouds.



You may have noticed in the pictures of Syme Hut that it is, in fact, bolted down with guy wires. This is not a coincidence, as the wind was quite strong. So strong, in fact, that the wind howling across the rocks and around the hut made sleeping quite difficult.

The next morning was cloudy and windy. Jen and I had both reached the same obvious conclusion about our prospects at attempting the summit: it would be really stupid and we might die. Not, "oh that was really hard, I almost died!" No. The actual physical, clinical death that would result from being blown off a mountain top by a 70 mph gust of wind and getting several seconds of free fall before contributing to the scree field in a spectacular, if slightly messy, fashion.

So, we set off down the mountain.

Now, naive hikers might think that down is easier than up because "gravity does all the work". It turns out that gravity is sometimes a little over eager in its assistance and has the pesky habit of throwing unwary hikers down onto the ground when they loose their balance.

I had only a couple of spills on the scree field, resulting in minor abrasions to my hands and a sore shoulder. Poor Jen, though, did not fare so well. Her legs were still shot from the previous day's exertions, and so she had a great deal of trouble keeping her balance on the poor footing. She spent a great deal of the journey sliding down the slope, riding a small, controlled avalanche. There are some pretty spectacular bruises, but we will spare you having to see pictures of them.

After we finally got down out of the scree, we had just a couple of dozen stairs to get down before we got to the point where we had to make a decision: continue with the plan and go on to Lake Dive Hut or head back to Dawson Falls, the car, and go home a day early. It was not an easy decision, but in the end we decided that we would likely not be back to Mt. Taranaki and so decided to continue with the plan.

It turns out this was a pretty good choice, as the next couple of kilometers of trail was a very cool walk around the side of the mountain, above the tree line and through tussock grass. This got us some great views of the surrounding country side before the clouds set in for the afternoon.





Sadly, the pleasant part of the track had to end eventually, and we started descending the mountain. This, of course, meant more steps. Going up a couple thousand steps leads to some huffing and puffing, burning thighs, and a lot of expended energy. Going down a couple thousand steps leads to some huffing and puffing, a lot of expended energy, and some pretty sever knee abuse. Especially when wearing packs.

It took us much longer than we wanted to, but eventually we made it to Lake Dive Hut. This was the swankiest hut we stayed at this trip, with indoor running water and a wood/coal stove for heat. We spent an enjoyable evening sitting in front of the stove, playing cards with the other trampers.




We got out to a relatively early start Monday morning for what we supposed would be a relatively easy hike back to Dawson Falls Visitor Centre. It turns out we still need to work on our topographical map reading skills, because it was a pretty rough trail. At least it was not the monotonous trudging up or down slope for hours on end. No, instead it was a good, even mixture of up and down, with a couple of interesting river crossings thrown in for fun. Also there were a couple of places where the "slope" became more of a "wall" and we had to climb up and down some interesting wooden apparatuses to continue on our way.

I think my favorite was the stream crossing where we had to climb up the river about 10 meters before getting to the place where the trail continued.



Progress was slow, and we took an hour longer than the "suggested" time to get back to the car. We were somewhat concerned about the time because we had agreed to help ferry some of the other trampers we met at the Lake Dive Hut from Dawson Falls to their car at North Egmont (another 4-5 hours on foot). Only one of them was there waiting for us, but she had all three of their packs. The rest had decided to continue on to North Egmont on foot.

We dropped her and the bags off at the entrance to the park by North Egmont and got on the road, for a beautiful drive through the New Zealand country side.

We were exhausted, bruised, and sore.
We were exhilarated, content, and happy.