New Zealand - Mount Egmont national park

From the fifth of January it was time for my solo journey. I said goodbye to Auckland and my family and took the bus to New Plymouth. The drive took around 7 hours and I arrived in New Plymouth around 4 P.M. I checked in at the hostel and went out for a walk and had dinner. Not much later it was bedtime because the next morning I had to wake up pretty early to take a cab to Mount Egmont national park, which is also known as mount Taranaki.

Mount Taranaki is a beautiful mountain which looks very symmetrical. It stands alone and you can see it from miles away. Maori legends say that the mountain first stood in the Tongariro national park. After a fight between Mount Ruapehu, Mount ngarahoe, mount Tongariro and mount Taranaki, Mount Taranaki got banned from the national park and was a lonely mountain as it stands alone like he does right now.

Next morning, a cab picked me up from the hostel and we drove to the start of the hike. The path starts of with a good climb of 2 hours through a dense forest. The higher I got, the less dense the path became. After a while I was able to see some peaks of the mountains. For now I could see the top of mount Taranaki and there were almost no clouds. That was a good thing, because I was heading to the Pouaki Tarns, also known as the mirror lake. I decided to speed up to get a clear view of the peak, but unfortunately when I reached the mirror lake the clouds already blocked the view. Because  the weather changed so quickly I stayed for one hour hoping for the clouds going away, but it didn’t work out that way as you can see In the pictures… Still it was a nice hike which took around 5 hours with some nice views.

The next day was a big one, because instead of walking around mount Taranaki I was going to climb it. Together with two people I met in the hostel we started the climb around 5 A.M. Although we started pretty early, there always are people that are earlier and finished the whole climb at about 7 A.M. They went for the sunrise and said it was amazing. In the beginning it was pretty easy, but after a while the normal path made place for a two hour gravel adventure. It really was necessary to be careful because it was easy to slip away which still happened a couple of times.

 After some time, instead of small stones the big rocks became the challenge. This rock climbing part also took around two hours. Eventually we reached the last part of the climb where we had to walk on a permanent layer of snow. This also was a challenging part, but after another hour we reached the top of the mountain. From here, the view was spectacular and we even were able to see the Tongariro national park which was my next stop. As the crow flies, it is about 150 kilometers, but because it is flat between the national parks, this was possible.

The way back was a lot quicker, but certainly not easier, especially the gravel part. It was possible to slide down, but it was a bit tricky. In the end it took us a good seven hours to complete the climb and it was totally worth it. Our feet hurt a lot but we threated ourself with a nice dinner in the center of New Plymouth. The next day it already was time to leave New Plymouth and I took the bus to Tongariro national park. When travelling to New Zealand, mount Egmont national park is a must visit, especially if you love mountains like I do.