Walk 4 - Pouakai Circuit |
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Day 1 (North Egmont to Holly Hut) |
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Leaving the North Egmont Visitor's Centre the track quickly climbed via series of steps through first, cloud forest, and then, sub-alpine scrub. High above the silhouette of Humphrey's Castle, a lava outcrop, pointed the way to the peak of Taranaki. Soon the steps ended and we found ourselves on a track that snaked along The Razorback ridge, leaving our foot prints in the melting remnants of the last snowfall. |
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Turning westward, we began a slower climb along the snow covered track to our highest point (1310m) before crossing under the impressive 140m Dieffenbach cliffs, the glacier-like end of an old lava flow. Our passage across the north face of Taranaki continued on a slow descent, past a mini-cirque opening up views to the peak, and across the Boomerang Slip. a major landslide that made for an interesting passage. |
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Day 2 (Holly Hut to Pouakai Hut)
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As soon as we had crossed the swamp, the 300m climb of the Pouakai range commenced in earnest, following a narrow razorback ridge, where landslides had further reduced the width to under a metre in places. This was the most dangerous part of the walk, not because of the landslides, but because the views behind of Taranaki were so superb as we climbed the ridge, that the constant pull to turn around and admire them posed a serious risk of falling flat on your face in the muddy track. Looking back at the perfect cone of the volcano framed in the wind-sculpted silhouettes of the mountain cedars reminded us of a Japanese rice paper painting. |
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Despite this distraction, we made it unmuddied to the top of the range and following the ridge along eastward, soon found ourselves at Pouakai hut, overlooking the line of ranges as they circled the ancient crater to the east and looking out to a band of cloud above the flat green landscape of the Taranaki plain to the south. |
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Day 3 (Pouakai Hut to North Egmont)
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Views from Henry Peak |
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On finishing the walk, we drove around to the eastern side of the mountain and spent 2 relaxing days as sole occupants of Konini Lodge, a slightly more upmarket hut (i.e. electricity, heating, refrigerator etc) within the NZ hut system. Installed in our armchairs in front of a large window framing the eastern face of Taranaki with its smaller siamese twin, Fantham's Peak, we were treated to a spectacle of the changing moods of the mountain, from sheets of rain (200mm in 24 hours) to games of peekaboo, as clouds variously covered or uncovered the mountain, and a brilliant sunset as a finale. The rain was not a surprise (the annual fall here is 6-7,000 mm) - the fact that we enjoyed the rain for the first time in New Zealand was! |
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When the weather lifted we did a couple of "warm-down" short walks in the misty rain-soaked forest. To celebrate our walk, we treated ourselves to a night out at the Dawson Falls Lodge - garlic and cheese mussels, an enormous minted lamb shank and roast vegetables. home made pavlova, with a fine local riesling and cabernet merlot - delicious! Trampers do not always subsist on a diet of dehydrated vegetables, muesli and pasta. |
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