Mt Taranaki

I decided to pry myself away from the climbing trips and go backpacking. A few people were doing the Taranaki Around the Mountain Circuit. This is where The Last Samurai was filmed since it apparently resembles some mountain in Japan. Anyway, sounded good enough to me, so I was soon on my way. After a nice 6 hour nap in the car, I awoke to views of the mountain we were about to conquer!



After about a 4 hour hike the first day, I had my first overnight experience in New Zealand backcountry tramping(experienced trampers only!).



We slept in huts like this each night. You call this backcountry? Yeah. Right.





Bell's Falls



They have a day hike in this area called the Enchanted Forest. I swear I saw a few fairies.



Experienced trampers only? Come on. There's a metal ladder!









This once for Dad. One of the kids on my trip knew all about native plants, so I learned all sorts of names and stuff to wow whoever will listen to me. This picture is of lancewood. The one on the right isn't dying.. it's actually the adolescent version of the one to the left. It's also got really sharp rugged edges, and in the South Island they're a lot more pronounced. Up here, there weren't as many moa, so with the lack of predator they evolved to be not so prickly.



Can you see the geology?!??









This is a series of the sunset/rise from Waiua Gorge(ous!.. Sorry.. had to do it.)















Above the bush line!




So we met this crazy American who told us a way to go off trail to get to "the coolest hut of his two months tramping in NZ." So we followed this stream bed up, up and up. Into a cloud.



Who can explain the square cloud to me?




Finally at the hut.



He was right. Simply amazing.








Syme hut. If you look closely you can see that the hut and the long drop toilet are tied down with cables because of the high winds. The whole structure, inside and out, looks like it was attacked by dinosaurs from people coming up here with crampons and axes and trying to dig out the doors to get in in the winter. Intense.





This next day we awoke to gorgeous weather and summitted from the south face. It's apparently a lot harder(and I was dying. It was steep and the whole one step forward two steps back thing with the scree and snow sucks), but here's our obligatory summit photo. 2518 metres. Going down this back to Syme was the most miserable thing ever. Way too steep and unstable. Miserable.





So those two mountains in the distance are Tongariro and Ruapehu, aka Mt Doom and Mordor. I'll be going there next weekend hopefully.



Sunrise from the Waingongoro hut.



This is a ski field. I'd rather go to Mt Brighton?




This hike out back to the car. Yay mountains!