The Assault on Mt. Taranaki

Okay, so I'm trying to add a bit of drama to the excursion. Part of what Mat wanted to do with me this weekend was to have a bit of a climb on Mt. Taranaki. So early-ish on Sunday morning, we headed out towards the mountain. Initially it seemed to have been a bad idea. From Opunake, the sky towards the mountain was very cloudy and it was raining a bit as we left. Quickly, though, the rain stopped and the skies started to clear. I was shown various points of interest along the way. I wish I knew as much about my area of the world as Mat knows about his. It's astonishing the stuff he knows about the area.

Eventually we approached the mountain and got a pretty good view of Mt. Taranaki.

Then we entered Egmont National Park. Mount Taranaki is the current name of the mountain, and the Maori name. Mount Egmont is the previous name is the one that Europeans gave to the mountain when they came and settled New Zealand. And the national park was given the European name. When we entered the park, we passed from farmland, few trees with lots of grazing areas, into a dense forest. And the line is very abrupt. From the plane, when I had seen Mt. Taranaki, I had thought that the area around the mountain was possibly rocky with lots of volcanic rocks. I don't know why I had assumed that would be the case for the area immediately around the mountain in a fairly perfect circle, but nowhere else in the little peninsula. In any case, I was mistaken, and it is actually dense forest that surrounds the mountain and the edge of the forest marks the boundary of the national park.

We also began to climb. I don't know what altitude we reached before we arrived at the Dawson Falls visitor center, but my ears popped at least twice. The visitor center is quite nice and has a number of dioramas with information about the flora and fauna of the area. There is also a model of the mountain and its immediate surroundings. We told the man in the center where we were headed and then started up towards a couple of shelters on the trail to the summit. At the beginning of the hike, we were passing through the dense forest. It was kind of eerie under the canopy, with moss growing on the trunks of the trees and most of the light cut off by the tree roof over our heads.

Then gradually, the canopy thinned out and became sparse overhead. Rather abruptly, the canopy disappeared and the trees became much shorter, more like bushes. We were somewhat suddenly able to see the surrounding countryside and also able to see how high we had reached.

And we were also able to see how far there was to go. But the day had become somewhat less bright and sunny. In fact, there were no periods of drizzly rain. When we reached the first shelter, we rested for a few minutes to wait out a stronger period of rain.

Abruptly, the bushes thinned to become mostly scrub grasses and some mosses with a few hardy bushes that were very low to the ground. And finally, as we reached the limit of the trail for which we were prepared, the grasses thinned to become just scree slopes with the little vegetation that was able to withstand the conditions on the upper reaches of the volcano's slopes.

But one of the nicer things about the periods of rain and then sunshine was the appearance of a really pretty rainbow.

At the top of our trek, at the limit of the grasses and scrub bushes, where the scree started, the clouds parted for a few minutes to give a final nice view of the surrounding areas of pasture and farmland.

We had gotten quite high on the mountain, but a look back up towards the summit of the lower peak still showed we had a ways to go. Unfortunately we did not have the footwear, handwear, or other equipment it would be necessary to scramble up scree to the top, and withstand what had become a rather bitter cold wind. We had reached the point that Mat had wanted to reach, though, so we descended quite happy with the accomplishment, settled at the second hut on the trail, and had lunch before descending back down to the lodge.

Along the way, we passed a recently built stone chair commemorating the life and death of one of New Zealand's more famous people, Sir Edmund Hillary and his ascent of Mount Everest.

At the bottom we headed towards Dawson Falls, but first checked out the oldest continuously operating generator/power plant in New Zealand. Mat was particularly interested in that as he is currently working on becoming a licensed electrician.

The final stop in the area was at Dawson Falls. We didn't climb all the way down, as that would have necessitated climbing all the way up again, and we had had enough of that with the mountain. I took Mat's word for it that the better view was this one, only part way down to the base of the falls. After that, we headed back to Opunake, where they hadn't seen the mountain at all that day, for a nice warm shower.