Mount Taranaki (New Zealand, 2'518m)

Length: 11.9km
Duration: 6:29hr
Elevation gain/loss: 1504m

Mount Taranaki (2'518m) has been on my bucket list ever since I laid my eyes on it for the first time in Summer 2015. Zeno and I were attending a conference in Auckland and stayed for 5 days longer to drive around the North Island. We visited Tarananki, Rotorua, Cape Reinga and the cities in between. We read about Mount Taranaki prior to our trip in 2015, and were planning on hiking it. As it was winter in New Zealand that meant the mountain was covered in snow and we needed to rent (or bring) crampons and an ice axe. A couple of days before our planned ascent, there was quite some new snow on the mountain and the avalanche risk was at a maximum. We decided to not do an attempt as it was too dangerous. As we've never seen the mountain in real life, we drove there to see its full glory, and man, it's such a beautiful mountain. I was very sad that we didn't get the chance to hike to the summit, but we drove to the visitor centre to be as close to it as possible.

Satelite picture of Mount Taranaki.

The beauty of this mountain is that it is an almost perfect circle. It is an active volcano and around the perimeter of the mountain, there is such a dense forest with vivid green ferns, it's just amazing. Since 1881, this circular area with a radius of 9.6 km from the summit is protected as a Forest Reserve and Egmont National Park is now the second largest Park in New Zealand. The mountain has a prominence of its full height, as there is no mountain next to it. On the west side it fades into the ocean and on the east side into land. The road to the visitor centre is narrow due to the dense forest. Once you're at the centre, you're above most of the dense sections and there's a great view of the mountain.

Since 2015, I wanted to hike this mountain and in Winter 2019/2020, we finally planned another trip to New Zealand which include a 5 day stay on the North Island. It was January 5th, 2020 and we ran the Tongariro Norther Circuit two days prior to our Taranaki attempt. The weather was forecasted to be really windy and we already felt the wind in Tongariro. Beside the wind, the conditions were really good, no rain, clear sky, but still some snow left on the summit. The wind however was suppose to be really strong and the guide at the visitor centre urged everyone to not attempt to hike the summit. We met someone who just came down from the mountain a day before our attempt and he told us that he turned around halfway because it was too windy. We continued to monitor every weather/wind report and saw that it was going to be less windy in the morning, so we decided to make an attempt early morning and if the wind picks up too much and we wouldn't feel comfortable, we would turn around no matter what.

The night before, we stayed at the Mount Taranaki Camphouse just by the visitor centre and the start of the 11.9km roundtrip trail to the summit. We packed all of our stuff the night before and were heading out at 4:20am with our headlamps to get an early start into the day. The first part of the trail is on an old road all the way up to the Taruhangi Lodge, it's an easy path to walk on and we enjoyed the stillness of the night. It was still dark when we made it to the lodge but the sun the was slowly about to rise. We didn't talk much as there was so much anticipation going on. We both wanted to hike this mountain so badly, but we knew that we probably wouldn't be able to do it because of the wind. However, for now there was none and we kept going past the tree line that we crossed by the lodge.

From the lodge onwards, the trail steepens. The first section involves some stairs and we were protected from the wind on both sides by big boulders. The sun was rising and the view was very clear. We saw the Mount Ngauruhoe and the Tongariro Northern Circuit in the distance, it was beautiful, we just hiked around there two days ago and now we were summiting Mount Taranaki. As soon as we were past this section, a big and exposed scree field comes up. We moved slowly, as the rock was quite loose. There were times, where the wind was gusty, but overall, the wind wasn't bad and we kept going. At some point, we realised that we might actually be able to summit Taranaki, but we still didn't trust the wind.

After the scree field, the rest of the trail involves some boulder climbing. The holds were good and we were wearing our mountaineering boots, so the grip on our shoes was also good. At this point, we were only a couple of hundred meters away from the summit, the wind was more calm than ever, and we finally realized we are making it to summit. I was filled with joy, climbing this mountain was on my list since 5 years and I couldn't believe how far we were along the trail.

However, everything changed within a couple of meters. As soon as we reached the summit crater, the wind was strong. It came from the West side of the mountain, so at the summit crater is was blowing past it. On our left side was a rock face and on the right side, we saw the ice-covered summit crater. From here, it is only a couple of meters to the summit. You cross the snowfield and ascend to the summit on the other side. We brought our ice axe with us for support in the snow, but the wind was just too strong. We couldn't even stand up right and ice was falling off the rock face on our side. I suddenly felt like the danger of such a mountain and we both decided that we didn't feel comfortable continuing to the summit. We quickly moved down a couple of meters, and everything changed again, there was no wind, the sun was shining and everything was calm.

At first, I was sad that we didn't continue, but I felt confident that we made the right choice, we didn't want to risk anything and we've nevertheless made it all the way to the summit crater. That was a great achievement and I was filled with joy to finally have summited Mount Taranaki ;) Also, we were the first people to summit this mountain on this day.

On the way down, the wind was picking up a bit, but it wasn't bad. Along the track to back to the hut, we passed about 10-15 people. Most of them were, to my surprise, not at all equipped and prepared for this hike. Some of them were wearing shorts and only had water bootle in their hand. This is a serious and really exposed hike and definitely shouldn't be attempted by someone who never hiked before. Most of them were also very exhausted and asked us how far until the summit, they clearly had no idea how long the trail was. We had to be a bit careful going down the scree field, as the rocks were very loose. We found a section with very small scree and going down there was definitely more easy. By the time we were back at the lodge, clouds were also coming in.

From the lodge onwards, we decided to run down the last section, as it was a well-made trail and much faster. We were back at the visitor centre by 11:00am! We still basically had the whole day in front of us, what a great feeling. We had some well-deserving fries and a coffee by the visitor centre, enjoyed the view of the mountain for a bit longer and were on our way to Whanganui, where we would spend the night on the campground before heading to the South Island the next day ;)