Mount Taranaki

Sunday, 20.10.2019

Fortunately, Dan and I decided to go to Mt Taranaki on the weekend. The weather was not the best, but we really wanted to get out of the city. So we drove up to the camping site on Friday afternoon.

There we met Peter and Lenka from the Czech Republic, who were originally planning to do the Summit Track on Saturday. However, since it was raining and very cloudy, we decided to do the Dawsons Fall Track together instead. It was already quite adventurous because half of the track was underwater. We got so wet that I decided not to continue camping and rather stay overnight in a hostel in New Plymouth with a warm shower.

Fortunately, the weather on Sunday was slightly better. We drove back to the mountain hoping to at least see the peak. We had already given up on the Summit Track because we didn't have the right equipment for it. Unfortunately, it was still quite cloudy, but we decided to stay because better weather was forecasted for the afternoon. We originally planned to do the Victoria Loop Track, but luckily we met Graham, a local kiwi, who suggested a different route where we would actually see the mountain. Apparently, on the Loop Track, we would have only seen bush. So we followed him and hiked to a hut at around 1500m. We would have never found the path we took as tourists on our own, I'm pretty sure about that. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the hut, we still couldn't see anything. It was so hazy that we couldn't even see the hut from 30m away. But Graham said that it should clear up, so we stayed there and behold, not even 15 minutes later, almost all the clouds had disappeared and we could see the entire mountain. That lasted the entire afternoon. On the way back, we met Peter and Lenka again, who had done a different track that day. Just for the view alone, the 4.5-hour drive was already worth it!