Ngauruhoe and New Plymouth

Last weekend I headed up Mt Ngauruhoe with a bunch of people who had been my students on an introductory alpine course a couple of weeks earlier. We successfully met at the car park at the appointed time in light drizzle and clag but with high hopes that it would clear...

Not much to see so far.

Ngauruhoe teases us with a brief glimpse before disappearing again

Climbing up through the cloud

Dan perfects his "staunch pose", an outstanding matter from the course previously

Nearly there

It was really good to be on top of a mountain again!

A steaming fumarole at the summit. Great for melting snow in your water bottle. Eat that, South Islanders. Unfortunately the warm rocks near the summit meant the snow had been hollowed out from underneath and we fell into a lot of holes.

There were heaps of ice feathers and cool sastrugi

Ngauruhoe has interesting terrain on top - it has three summits (one of them is the crater) so we made sure to bag all of them.

Evidence of a fast and fun descent

I then drove to Taranaki to see Kyle and Betty and hopefully to climb Mt Taranaki. Unfortunately the route that looked the most direct on my (large-scale) map was apparently the worst road I could have taken. It was State Highway 43 from Taumaranui to Stratford and is known as "The Forgotten World Highway". I think this is because:

• They forgot to put any people in there. Sometimes I would drive for 1/2 hour without seeing the lights of farm houses and I saw five other cars in 150 km.
  
• They forgot to clear fallen trees and rocks off the road, luckily I was able to squeeze through
• They forgot to seal 20 km in the middle of it.
  

I didn't take any photos but I saw lots of these:


Apparently it's an amazing drive during the day (and when you're not in a hurry) so I'll have to go back sometime.

That night driving to New Plymouth, Mt Taranaki looked strikingly beautiful, standing above the plain in the crisp, clear moonlight. However the forecast wasn't great and sure enough, it was shrouded in cloud and showers the next day and I never saw it again. Instead, Kyle and I went mountain biking on some local tracks. The mountain biking was hardcore extreme so I didn't take any photos (actually I forgot my camera). We also visited a multi award-winning footbridge that is one of the nicest I've seen, it cleverly frames the mountain. Obviously I stole this photo off the web since you can see Mt Taranaki:


After lunch with Kyle and Betty (they look great but sorry no photos) I had the long drive back to Wellington - with the added interest of driving head-on into the Great Storm of 2011 on the way and having to wait at Pukerua Bay due to snow on the road to Porirua!