travel essay: hiking mount taranaki

I crawl out of bed in the grey dawn light and make my way to the kitchen. I’m about to attempt hiking Mount Taranaki, near New Plymouth, New Zealand, with my friend Dan. We are both hikers, but Taranaki is a strenuous hike and the weather doesn’t look great. Dan is already up, his leaving the front door cracked a sure sign of it. I’m not dressed for a hike yet; he’s already got his gear stowed in his backpack. We run down our list of gear and food and then we head to the car. I’m driving, the lure of heated seats too much to resist at 6:30 in the morning.

It’s only a short drive from the city centre to Egmont National Park but we stop for a much-needed coffee before hitting the road. The drive takes us along SH3 for a few miles before leading us down a narrow road into the park itself. The mountain is obscured by the looming fog. To this day, I’m not entirely sure that there is a mountain there; I think its fictional.

The Maori legends say that Taranaki once stood with the other mountains on the Central Plateau – Tongariro, Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe – but after a dispute over either a maiden or a wife, he fled. Carving out the Wanganui River on his path west, he now stands sentinel over the New Plymouth harbour and Wanganui River.

The road gets narrower, begins to go uphill, the wind picks up a bit. Dan and I look at each other and crank the heat up. This might be the last little bit of heat we have for a while. Rain begins to spatter the windshield as we wind our way up the tiny, tree-lined road. We agree that its nice we get to drive this bit up the mountain. The visitors centre is located at the start of the tracks. Their website says they’re open from 8am, but when we get there at 7:30, the sign says 8:30. We sip the rest of our coffee in silence as the rain and wind whip around the car. Finally, there’s a respite in the weather and we begin to get our gear on. Rain pants, rain jackets, a fleece, gloves, a hat. Sunglasses go in my pocket, just in case. It takes us about twenty minutes to get sorted, and then we lock the car and walk towards the trail.

hiking Mount Taranaki

I have nothing nice to say about this first part of the trail.

It turns out, I really hate walking uphill… as in, straight uphill with no winding paths that gently take you to the top of something. We plod along in the rain. I’m hunched over the hiking pole, resolutely putting one foot in front of the other. I stop every ten feet. Dan is well ahead of me, turning back every so often to make sure I haven’t either toppled over the side of the mountain or turned around; I’m not sure which. We aren’t even on a trail. We are on a road, as we learn when three utes grumble past us up to the radio tower.

The views are nothing to write home about either – there is fog, some rain, more fog, and more rain. I can see some glints of water in the plains when the merest hint of light peeks through the heavy clouds, but I never actually see the sun. I’m sure that the view is lovely on a nice, sunny, summer’s day, but today, in the early fall, with the low hanging clouds and the intermittent rainfall, all I can see is the last two hundred metres that I climbed. As we reach the ridgeline, I begin to see towering sheer rock above me. That’s quite lovely, but also sort of ominous – what am I walking toward?

After about an hour and a half of pure uphill walking, we reach the radio tower and the private lodge. No one is about at the lodge; its locked. The utes are parked below at the tower but we don’t see any sign of life. Far below us on the trail are two guys we had seen in the parking lot. We are probably 40 minutes ahead of them.

The tree line ended about half an hour ago, giving way to alpine scrub and andesite. The clouds are still there, heavier, but have lifted slightly so we can see the other ridge lines that radiate out from the summit of Mount Taranaki. We’ve climbed one ridge; there are many.

Dan makes an executive decision: “I’m not going up there,” he says as he points his hiking pole toward the summit. I am inclined to agree, although I would go up a bit further, so we decide to hike back toward the lodge via an alternate route. We follow signs for the Holly Hut Track, which takes us along the side of the mountain to the next ridge over. It’s a rocky path, lined with poles for alpine hikers, and for most of it I feel as though I am walking through a stream.

The DoC has built stairs, but they are pooled with rainwater so I end up walking along the wooden edges, stepping across rocks and mossy tussocks instead of in ankle deep water. It’s a gorgeous trail. We both agree that the uphill portion would be better if it was this.

There are two points where we cross a rockfall – going from ridge to ridge. There are wooden ladders that lead us down the rocky slope to the trail and Dan says, “I’m glad we are going down this, not up.” About twenty minutes later, we come to fork in the trail with a sign that points up the way we have just come: “Summer Route Only.”

Well, that’s nice to know now.

We continue following the signs for the visitors centre. The trail winds around the ridge and back to the other side, the sheer rocks are still towering above us now, just much farther away. I can still see the radio tower, but no longer the lodge. There is no one else on the trail.

A few times, we stop for photos. The clouds, with their brilliant background and the way that the ephemeral light hits the green hills, its too much to resist.

The scrub gets taller around us, near head height. The trail is still stream-like, the water pooling in the steps, the overflow trickling into the moss on the downhill side. Manuka trees now line the path, now rimu and lower altitude trees, like ash or birch.

When we finally arrive back at the visitors centre, we discard wet layers and go inside to dry off by the fire. I’m a little underwhelmed by the hike and I know I need to go back and do it properly, maybe next January. I want so badly to summit Taranaki, but I also know that today was not the day to attempt it. I would have ended up one of those horror stories, and as Dan put it, “we didn’t want to bother those nice guys over at mountain rescue.”

Soon, I’ll see it, but for now I’m happy to believe the legends.

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