On January 31st, Paul and I headed back down to New Plymouth for the long weekend. Last time we visited we saw Mount Taranaki looming in the distance and calling us (Paul and he brings me with) to come and climb it. So, that is what we went back to do. Paul and I didn't take much video during the hike because it was a long day and no one needed to hear my commentary on the upwards climb. The blog would became rated R. haha. Here is the link to my video blog:
">I'll also post some pictures on here. If you'd rather read, I also wrote an entry.
If you don't want to read, here are links to two other videos from our hike on the mountain. I apologize ahead of time for where I blow my nose because I didn't know Paul was videoing and I don't really know how to edit the videos. haha, sorry!
We arrived Saturday afternoon to the Fitzroy Beach Holiday Park and set up our tent. The cost adds up when staying in hotels for every weekend and we bought all our cool new camping
gear, so we figured we should put it to good use. The Holiday Park was right on the coastline so we could hear the waves crashing on the shore at night. The Holiday Park allows a mixture of campers and tent sites and is very open and casual. There were three trailers near our site that housed the toilets/showers and a kitchen. It seems people will stay at Holiday Parks for extended periods of time for vacations. I mean, people have their campers and drying racks. We saw two families hanging out together in a common space teaching a child to ride a bike and the other kids just ran around. It was a neat atmosphere, just spend the day chilling by the ocean with friends/family or going into town. Kiwis seem to love their "bachs"/cottages and weekend getaways. Paul and I fit in great!
I didn't sleep too well despite our ground pads and inflatable pillows. Part of the reason was my right hip has started aching occasionally and gets worse with walking. It started aching Saturday morning and increased quite a bit when Paul and I went for a walk around New Plymouth. I'm of course too
proud to tell Paul I'm hurting so he wasn't too pleased to see me limping to the bathroom upon our return to our campsite Saturday night. You know, like 12 hours before our plan to hike all day up and down a mountain. I told him I'd be fine and tried to, unsuccessfully, sleep it off. We awoke bright and early and made our way to the base of the hike in the Egmont National Park. My hip was still sore, but I was confident that it'd feel better after my muscles warmed up. Paul gave me a couple times to turn around at the beginning in case I couldn't make it, but I knew he'd be disappointed to waste the weekend and not do it. The time frame for completing the hike is limited as well, because we wanted to do it while it's warm so there is limited snow and ice at the top. So, I pushed through and ventured on, and the hip actually felt okay on the uphill. It hurt worse when I was walking flat or downhill.
So it took us like 6 hours to make it to the top. This six hours included
multiple mini stops because the climb straight up was tiring, for sure. The first part of the mountain was in the tree line, so it was a mixture of stairs, gravel incline, and a cement incline pathway. The mountain is pretty steep so there was no break in the ascent. No mental rest points where we could just walk on flat ground and not watch our steps. When we reached the top of the treeline, the landscape became arid and the ground underfoot consisted mostly of scree, small rocks/pebbles that slide under foot. Not too much fun. It was on the scree part that my anxiety started to increase. The day started out pretty clear, but as we started to climb we became surrounded by some clouds. During one of our breaks on a big rock after climbing the scree for about 30 minutes, the clouds started to clear and it gave me a clear realization of how high up we were, how steep the mountain was, and how much further there was to go. I was then fighting more of a mental fight than a physical one, although physically it wasn't easy either. I just pictured slipping on the
scree during the descent and plunging to my death. Dramatic, I know. Paul strongly encouraged me to continue. Since we'd gone that far, he wasn't going to turn around and my other option was to wait three hours for him to go to the top and come back for me. That didn't sound like a very good option for me, either, so I continued upwards. Our trekking poles were really helpful on the scree. On the way up, we saw a family with kids like 10 years old that were basically running up the scree. Crazy...
After the scree, we came to the rocky part of the mountain. There wasn't REALLY a pathway to walk along. There were poles directing you upwards, but we had our choice of which rocks we wanted to climb over. It wasn't mountain climbing on like a cliff face with ropes/rappelling. It was more literally climbing over and alongside rocks. Needless to say the trekking poles weren't too helpful at that point, so we tucked them away and went up hands and feet. Other people were most just walking up it, somehow. I was closer to crawling up, but I did it. So we
went up and up (see the trend) and we got to a mini peak where we had to make a small descent to get to the crater and the snowy part of the Mountain. Thankfully the snow was not icy and the weather was like 50-60 degrees F at top so it was easily passable. I could get used to snow if it was that warm with it! So we passed the snowy part and just when we thought we went up enough, there was another rocky part to climb up to get to the peak. Upon successfully reaching the peak, Paul and I were greeted with some amazing view of the West/South. We could even see some of the mountains from the South Island in the distance. The other directions were pretty full of clouds and there was a crazy amount of beetles and flies at the top so we didn't spend too much time up there to revel in our achievement. We went back to the snowy part and found a big rock to sit on to eat our lunch. Not much time to relax at the top either, because we still had to make our way back
I was in a much better mood on the descent. I guess that mentally I knew I'd already survived the stuff going up so I should be okay going down. Downhill is easier because gravity is working with us instead of against us, but it was still difficult because my legs were so sore that all the muscles to stabilize me were weak. I didn't feel like I could really trust my legs to keep me upright and balanced at times. Climbing on the rocks was time consuming but not too difficult and it was reassuring to have a big rock to hold onto. Once we got back to the scree, though, it was pretty much just sliding down. Some people got through the scree quickly because they did a mixture of running, skipping/little jumps, and sliding. I just didn't trust my legs for that. I thought that looks alright until you want to slow down or stop and gravity just keeps taking you down (again, to my death of course). Instead, we slowly made our descent and back to the treeline area. At this point, the path wasn't difficult to pass, it was just long.
I got sick of just going up on the first part, but at the end I got sick of going down. I find descending to actually be more fatiguing to my knees and legs so any little slight incline on the way down actually felt good. I'm not sure if walking downhill would be harder if it came first, though. It might just be harder because it's at the end of an already long day.
So we made it back to our car after an 11 hour day of tramping. Emotions ran all over the place, but in the end it felt good to have completed the whole thing. Now that I'm farther out I can say I'm glad I did it. It takes some time for the memories to fade to be able to say that. I was exhausted, but managed to stay awake to reap our rewards of Hell's Pizza for dinner. Since we were staying in a tent and we had our fair share of fresh air for the day, we decided to order and eat in at the restaurant. It's a mainly takeaway restaurant so there was just like 5 tables to sit at. I'm
surprised they let us stay, though. We weren't looking too fresh. We probably didn't smell too good either. It's funny how long it takes to burn calories, but how quickly we're able to replace them. We then got ice cream and beer as reward as well. One could say the achievement would be reward enough, but I say pizza and ice cream is way better. After the long day I could've really gone for a real bathroom instead of the trailer bathrooms, but we had to make do. The bathrooms gave a warning that you'd have hot water for 6 minutes, but you'd get a cold blast at 5 minutes to let you know your time was almost up. For those that know me, you know I've probably never taken a 6 minute shower in my life, much less after hiking for 11 hours. Thankfully I got lucky with my timing or whatever, because the shower stayed warm the whole time. I did try to make it a quicker shower, anyway, but it wasn't 6 minutes long. Then Paul and I settled into the tent for the night and after making the video blog and finishing our beers we had
enough energy for a game of cribbage and then we passed out. I slept a little better Sunday night compared to the previous night, but I was looking forward to getting back to a regular bed. On Monday, Paul and I pretty much just packed up our gear and headed home. It's like a 2.5 hour drive, but again it feels so long after a busy weekend.
I'm not sure I'd ever think of doing these big hikes on my own. During them I'm not too happy with Paul for suggesting we do them. Now, I'm still not sure I'd choose on my own to do 11 hour hikes, but I'm happy I've completed the ones I have and look forward to more tramping, but hopefully they'll be a little shorter time and distance and little less steep. The following week we completed the Tongariro Crossing, a great Day Walk and it was more enjoyable with no breakdowns! Woohoo. Thankfully my sore legs and knees from Taranaki felt better just in time to put them to good use again. The fatigue and soreness was way way better after the Tongariro Crossing and I could actually walk up and down
The Polynesian Maori reached New Zealand in about A.D. 800. In 1840, their chieftains entered into a compact with Britain, the Treaty of Waitangi, in which they ceded sovereignty to Queen Victoria while retaining territorial rights. In that same year...more history
