Sarah WallockDAY ONE:
My first time going up Mt. Taranaki was when I hiked to Pouakai Tarns, a mirror lake that reflects the mountain, which is the first section of the Pouakai Crossing. I loved this walk because the path was so well-maintained and easy to follow. It was incredible how curated and constructed the wooden and rubber walkways were. One of the guys in the Pouakai Hut compared it to a highway, which I found hilarious. When the park was allocated to the Department of Conservation, Working and Income employees hiked and lived on the mountain for weeks at a time, in the heat of summer, to construct the pathways led by a group of engineers. I knew in New Zealand the Department Of Conservation does an especially great job of attending to environmental issues, concerns, and spaces, but I didn’t expect the parks to be this hiker-friendly. We parked at the parking lot on Mangorei Road, 20 minutes away from our hostel, and headed up the track. The rain poured down and we walked through the lush, green forest. At the top, there are many great viewpoints of Taranaki, but today they were all fogged up. We could barely see 20 feet ahead of us. Once we arrived at Pouakai Hut, we stopped for snacks, layered up, and headed to the Tarns. As you can see below, it was very foggy. I look forward to heading up again on a clearer day to see the iconic reflection of Mt. Taranaki.
DAY TWO:
Nick and I drove to the North Egmont Visitor Center to determine what hikes to do. We planned to do some shorter day hikes but we stumbled upon three tracks that we looped together that were stunning. We didn’t even plan to summit a portion of the mountain, we had the intention of just walking a short loop around the goblin forest and visitor center, but one thing led to another…
We hiked for 1 km on the Ngatoro loop through the goblin forest and planned to head back. But after seeing a sign for the Maketawa Hut and thoroughly enjoying the Pouakai Hut from a few days before, we hiked 2 km to Maketewa hut. The views from this hike were insane! And the experience itself was pretty cool: besides walking along with the winding roots of trees and dodging mud puddles, we scrambled up and down vertical ladders through the goblin forest.
Lastly, we hiked 3 km back to the visitor center on Translator Rd. This portion of the hike was virtually a gravel road that goes from point A, the visitor center, to point B, the base of the Translator Tower. It wouldn’t be my ideal hike to go up and down this road, but for a straight-shoot back to the car after 2.5 hours of hiking already, it was perfect for our purposes. On the way down, we met a woman with her alpine gear who’d summitted Taranaki that day. She said there were 9 others up there as well. She told us that the Alpine Club holds a yearly free climb for anyone interested in February. If only we would still be in town!
After our first two days exploring Mouth Taranaki, we were infatuated. There’s nothing like spending the weekends grabbing a freshly roasted coffee downtown, heading up to the mountain, spending the afternoon hiking and coming home to a warm shower and home-cooked meal. This is the lifestyle we came to NZ for and we are loving it!
