A few days back, Nico and I made our way to Mt. Taranaki. Excited about our newly purchased backcountry hut pass, on saturday afternoon we hiked into the Maketawa Hut which is at the base of Mt. Taranaki. It was a sweet shelter with great views of both the mountain and the farms below. We also met 3 other Americans there who just came up from the South Island doing similar hiking and camping to what we are planning. It was nice to know that there were going to be some other people on the mountain the next day. Apparently getting to the top of this one is very weather dependent and there was no guarantee that we'd be able to get to the top.
Turns out the world was shining upon us, with a beautiful day. The hike was about 3.2 miles with a mile of elevation gain. This is like the steepest trail in the Adirondacks... with 3 times the length. It turned out not to be that bad of a hike though. We were kinda exposed the whole time, up until we got to the top where there was some shelter among the rocks, and we could just relax and have some lunch.
We also met this crazy guy who is planning on summiting the mountain 100 times this year. He was on his way down as we were going up, and then we saw him heading up as we were going down! Not sure what his motivation would be to climb the same mountain 100 times... but good luck to you.
View from the scoria fields. It was amazing being above the clouds!
Then from there we headed down towards Wellington. Both Nico and I decided that big cities really are not our thing, as we both were pretty uncomfortable for our day there. We did get to meet up with Hannah from Earthwise and catch up. We spent last night at the top of a hill that overlooks the city, which was actually a really nice spot close to the city to spend a night. Now we are on the Ferry to Picton and the south island and really excited about getting back out to the wilderness!
I've got some more awesome picts from this hike posted at my picasa site
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