There is a clean­ness to the air found in moun­tains; a fresh taste.  This fresh­ness can bring both the snows that cover the peaks and the rains that obscure them.  Rains turn to fogs and clouds, so that the vis­tas to been seen from the peeks can only be moment­ar­ily glimpsed.  Their elev­a­tion has drawn many men to seek the highest vant­age points. 

I have always loved moun­tains.  Either look­ing up to their fram­ing of the val­leys below or being able to stand on their sum­mits and view the dis­tant vis­tas they offer.  New Zea­l­and has offered some of the most amaz­ing moun­tains I have seen out­side the ski fields of Europe and I share with you now some of those dis­cov­er­ies here.

North Island — Mount Tongariro

Mount Tongariro is actu­ally an entire vol­canic com­plex and World Her­it­age site.  It is loc­ated 10 miles south­w­est of Taupo, and com­prised of three act­ive vol­ca­noes dom­in­at­ing the land­scape of the cent­ral North Island.  We first saw the com­plex from the van on our arrival at lake Taupo.  Its snow caped peeks were vis­ible in the far dis­tance over the lake above the shoreline.  The park itself is roughly split into two parts.  The main moun­tain town of Whakapapa is half way into the moun­tains and the base of the ski fields that sit atop its lead­ing road.  It has all levels of accom­mod­a­tion and com­fort but we made tracks straight for the DOC camp­site that sits between the road and a river.  The aver­age DOC site is a simple affair, but this one was much more.  It had hot water – one of the few! – powered sites, a laundrette and a shop.  All unlikely find­ings in a DOC camp.  It also had one of the greatest views in the world. 

Or at least it should have…

The fog was in the day we arrived and not a mote let alone a moun­tain could be seen. 

“There is actu­ally a moun­tain around here?” Cesca asked the DOC shop­ping assist­ant as he took our camp fee’s. 

He laughed, “Yes, usu­ally, its the big one just behind this build­ing.  You’ll see it tomorrow!”

We did see it the next day… through the incess­antly strong rain. 

The DOC have a large inform­a­tion centre in the middle of Whakapapa that dis­penses advice about the fam­ous Tongariro Cross­ing.  This cross­ing is actu­ally part of a much harder 5 day walk around the base of the entire moun­tain range.  It is fam­ous for two reas­ons, firstly it is pos­sible – and recom­men­ded – to do the cross­ing in one day, mak­ing the walk the most tramped in the coun­try.  The other reason is that because of the num­bers of walk­ers (some­times 2000 a day) many people drastic­ally under­es­tim­ate the dif­fi­culty.  High alpine walk­ing is always dan­ger­ous as the weather is very very change­able.  The DOC info-centre has a sign board keep­ing the scores; 5 res­cues, 2 broken limbs and 1 death already this year.  Given the num­bers that under­take the cross­ing this was not a high per­cent­age, but it was per­haps the reason for the mood­i­ness of the DOC offi­cial at the info desk.  I asked her the weather and she almost sighed,

“Have you got moun­tain gear, ice axes and cram­pons?” she asked.

“Erm, no”

“Then its not pos­sible today”

“How about guided?” I asked.

“There will be no guides who can take you, the weather is too bad”

She gave me a stern look, but I merely shrugged.

“Never mind then, we will do another walk, per­haps the waterfall.”

I moved off to the side and the very next man in the line  – who had over­heard all of this -  said,

“What is the weather like today?”

The lady sighed again… She prob­ably answered this ques­tion many many times a day. 

So instead of the cross­ing, we walked the fant­astic water­fall route through the base of the moun­tains.  This was a 3 hours walk around a loop of very var­ied land­scapes and well worth the effort.  Across the remains of prior vol­canic flows we walked, over fast run­ning rivers, past amaz­ing plants and wild­life.  As for the falls them­selves; they were lovely.  High in the dis­tance the moun­tain played hide and seek with us and our cameras.

 

The cross­ing remained impossible the next day and so gave up on it and moved on to the other side of the moun­tain and Ohak­une; another small vil­lage at the base of a road lead­ing up to a ski field.  There we under­took the 3 hour Waitonga Falls walk.  This was another not­able walk that passed many dif­fer­ent types of view and ter­rain.  After a climb it opened over a sunken lava flow, which had a long snak­ing walk­board placed up on it.  It was a very clear day and we had great view of the moun­tains to our left as we crossed.

At the end of that sec­tion we again entered a forest and walked down for about 30 minutes before the path came to a end at a fast run­ning river.  This river was fed by the large and beau­ti­ful Waitonga Falls.  But from our vant­age point we couldn’t really see it as it was obscured by trees.  Cesca then had a brain­wave and find­ing some tim­ber (pre­sum­ably put there to be built into a con­tinu­ing path) threw it across the waters.  I looked at it bal­an­cing on two rocks.  Han Solo’s words came back to me;

“I have a bad feel­ing about this!” 

Fall­ing in would not mean drown­ing (prob­ably) but would cer­tainly screw my cam­era and mean a one and half hour walk back while wet.  I placed a foot on the board, drew a breath and ran across.  The board twis­ted with my weight and then slipped!

I just made it.  Look­ing at the boards new pos­i­tion – it had some­how not fallen in – I knew that it would be a big chal­lenge to get back.

But the bet­ter view was def­in­itely worth it with the sun in a per­fect pos­i­tion to high­light the spray com­ing off the rocks.  We stayed for lunch whilst we looked at the pos­sib­il­ity of get­ting back over the river.  In the end we just went for it and my left foot only got a little wet, which was very lucky!

South Island.

Mount John. 

South island is almost one giant moun­tain range.  Or at least that’s how it felt to me driv­ing around it.  We drove up to Tekapo, which lives at the base of the moun­tain, through the wil­der­ness of Burke Pass.  This leads up to a large beau­ti­ful lake sur­roun­ded on all sides by moun­tains and forests.  On one edge is the closest of these; Mount John.  Atop this stands the Earth & Sky Obser­vat­ory, which is New Zealand’s largest and most impress­ive.  By this point in our jour­ney we were joined by Francesca’s older sis­ter Ara­bella and had picked up a small camper to squeeze ourselves into.  Ara­bella has more get up and go than per­haps her small size belies.  It was the work of a few moments for her to have found a bike hire shop and have hatched the plan of get­ting to the top of the moun­tain where there lay a nice café in the obser­vat­ory.  The bike hire guy gave us an apprais­ing look,

“Bike much?” he asked.

“Not many moun­tains in the UK, but I do bike around Epping forest.  I have a Marin and Cesca has a Spe­cial­ized Rock­hop­per” I answered.

He nod­ded, “Cool, ok you can take these two for the ladies and you your­self can have my bike.”

He wheeled out a very nice bike and I eagerly jumped aboard.  Then he gave us some advice about tack­ling the mountain,

“Head out along the rivers edge,” he said point­ing to my map, “then it gets a little steep.” He looked at me.  “Then it gets bloody steep and you’ll have to walk for a few hun­dred meters until you meet the main road head­ing up the moun­tain.  From there its a ride to the top.”

“Sweet!”

We star­ted the jour­ney as pro­scribed by zoom­ing down through town and passed the camp­site at the moun­tains base.  Thence we were into the track lead­ing around the lake. 

 

The col­our of the water amaz­ing.  Still waters here all exhibit some levels of vol­canic residue and this lends the most beau­ti­ful spec­trum of col­ours and hues.  I had often thought that – in this photo shopped world – New Zea­l­and could not be the col­ours the adverts por­tray, but I was wrong.  It is.  The greens of trees and fields are brighter than in the UK, the blues of waters and lakes are either crys­tal clear or a won­der­ful mix­ture of blue and cyan.  Moun­tains are many shades of white and silver.

 

We made our way up to the road.  This was as windy as hell and made the ride up to the top quite dan­ger­ous and almost impossible as the many wind­ing turns all played close to a ser­i­ous drop off.  How­ever, once to the top we all found the chal­lenge had been worth it.  The top of the mount breaks into a col­lec­tion of domes that house the tele­scopes.  These were amongst a low set of build­ings and, up a small wooden path, the café.  This was a fant­astic place to have lunch and we tucked into our scrog­gin’, which was much deserved after all that exer­cise. We even­tu­ally ran out of scrog­gin’ and so went inside to have a cof­fee. Our server turned out to be a uni­ver­sity stu­dent who was one of the guides for the nightly star gaz­ing tour.  I love star gaz­ing and the chance to gaze through tele­scopes of that mag­nitude was not to be missed.  We signed up to the 10pm tour.

 

Com­ing down from Mount John was a con­trast to rid­ing up and took mere minutes on the tar­mac road all the way down. At one point I got up to 55Kph on my odo­meter — break­ing the speed limit!  We then rode around the base via the road and back into town to hand the bikes back.

That night we met up with the bus in town that took us up to the obser­vat­ory.  Lights are banned at night due to the work of the tele­scopes, which are look­ing for new plan­ets around dis­tant stars.  We were driven up the same dan­ger­ous road that we had biked that day in total dark­ness.  We all exchanged wor­ried looks but our Japan­ese driver had the meas­ure of the feat. Atop we had a fant­astic glance through the lens towards such delights as the Tarantula Neb­ula and Jupiter (I could count the brown rings!).  For me – per­haps more than for the oth­ers – this was a magical visit.  After — I swapped news of the pos­sible dis­cov­ery of Dark Mat­ter (which I had read in New Sci­ent­ist that morn­ing) with the staff.

 

Mount Cook

This tale of New Zea­l­and moun­tains has saved the best till last.  Mount Cook is the highest moun­tain in the coun­try and a fam­ous sight with its curved peak.  Gen­er­a­tions of Kiwis have vis­ited the moun­tains base, which is all DOC con­trolled parks, and wondered how you could pos­sibly climb such a large moun­tain?  One such brave soul was Sir Edmund Hil­lary who used the Cook as a prac­tice for the big push up Everest.  It is set amongst other large moun­tains all carved by the many gla­ciers that have retreated up the valley.

Get­ting to the park is good look­ing enough as you have to drive along lake Pukaki.  This lake is stu­pendously large and leads into one of my favour­ite parts of New Zea­l­and.  Its amaz­ing col­our being a nat­ural part of its gla­cial beginnings.

As any self respect­ing fan of the Lord of the Rings movie will tell you; the film’s cli­matic battle between the forces of Human­ity and the Orcs of Mordor hap­pens out­side the gates of the city of Gondor.  Here the wiz­ard Gan­dalf leads the Gon­dori­ans to defend their white city against 50 thou­sand Orcs and worse that are ham­mer­ing at the gates.  It is here that the people of Rohan ride their 8000 horses down the moun­tain side to lift the cit­ies’ siege.  It is a great moment in the film and it was filmed in this valley:

The Pelen­nor Fields themselves!

Once up to the small town of Mount Cook Vil­lage we ran into a ser­i­ous rain storm and so spent the day invest­ig­at­ing the Sir Edmund Hil­lary museum, which is based in the local hotel.  It had a short movie play­ing trib­ute to the Everest climb as well as the actual snow vehicles he used to race across the south pole.  Sur­round­ing all this were many books writ­ten about the great man and smal­ler exhib­its of his equip­ment.  Also on site was a small 3D cinema, which showed an inter­est­ing film about the stars (that the girls fell asleep in!) and a really cool movie about climb­ing the moun­tains (which used 3D glasses).  All in all, the museum was worth the visit – espe­cially on a wet day — and got us all fired up about the pos­sib­il­it­ies of vis­it­ing the mountain.

The DOC inform­a­tion site here was espe­cially large and took book­ings for the many back­coun­try huts one can visit in this area.  It sur­prises me that DOC are so happy for people to just go wan­der­ing off into ser­i­ous moun­tain wilds, but I guess this is the Kiwi way of things.  If you get lost and die, well, you were at least warned and given all the inform­a­tion you could have needed.  Ara­bella loves inform­a­tion sites like this and we spent 30 minutes or so check­ing that the walk we had planned was the best pos­sible use of our time.

Brav­ing the rain again we hunkered down at the local DOC camp site – at the start of the walk – and awaited the morn­ing with the hope of a clear view.  When I awoke I tore back the cur­tains to see that our wait had not been in vain:

 

The walk up to the best view of the moun­tain is 4 hours easy.  known as the hooker Val­ley walk it meanders up the side of a river, cross­ing it once, and passed all sorts of spe­cial geo­lo­gical fea­tures.  We packed up lots of water, food and scrog­gin’ and got going.  Amaz­ingly we received a phone recep­tion on the walk and so I was able to call my brother back in Lon­don and describe the view.  As if my words would be enough.  I have felt small against the back­drop of nature before, but the extreme wil­der­ness of this walk was intim­id­at­ing as much as it was heaven.

 

It was about an hour into the walk before the river turned to face Cook itself, lend­ing us a photo oppor­tun­ity not to be missed.

 

The moun­tain holds sway over all oth­ers in this range as if it is lord over them.  Its great height is almost all in the face and so it imposes just as much as Everest would do.  As we regarded it, its peak was con­stantly being hid­den and revealed by fast mov­ing clouds.  Surely at the top it must be intensely windy! 

Our final des­tin­a­tion was the ice­berg rich lake at the base of the retreat­ing gla­cier.  This opened up the view and gave us breath­tak­ing vis­tas of the clouds play­ing across Cook. It was almost impossible to take a bad photo and even the iPhone’s 2 mega­pixel cam­era man­aged this shot:

 

We sat there and ate our lunch while gaz­ing at the moun­tain.  To our right some kids played a game of try­ing to hit the small float­ing ice­bergs with the shore stones.  Even­tu­ally we went up to the gla­cial edge by wad­ing through a scrabble of stones and pebbles, the pile up of which is the slope wall of the lake.  I found there some fant­astic flat pebbles and took the oppor­tun­ity to demon­strate my life-long pas­sion for skim­ming stones.

This was not my first time at see­ing a gla­cier, after all I have skied on top of three or four in Europe – but it was my first time of see­ing the end wall of one.  They are extremely dirty at the ends – the mud and rock being crushed by its slither­ing splays across its face like chocol­ate cake on the face of a small child – but you could still sense the strength that bends nature to its will and carves whole ranges in its passing.  After see­ing it I was look­ing for­wards to vis­it­ing Fox gla­cier (a com­ing post).

Finally, hav­ing eaten our fill and taken our time – we star­ted back along the path, back towards the start­ing point of our day.  Many a rear­wards glance to Cook and many stops to take reflec­tion pho­tos in the pools lin­ing the river broke the journey. 

How­ever, I arrived back at the van both tired and happy.

The next day was great sunny weather and we headed back along the road we had driven up and thence off into the East of New Zea­l­and.  Leav­ing the moun­tain behind us we could see it for miles and miles such was the clar­ity of the weather. 

I think Cook was my favour­ite moun­tain visit and one of my high­lights of the entire jour­ney to this won­der­fully wild and very big country.

 

Regards,

Basho.

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