Story of the MonthTwo of our key staff, Anthony and Tim, took a recent trip up to the summit of Mt Taranaki. Keep reading as Anthony Tells you all about it:
We finished work at the store on Saturday early evening , loaded the car with our ice gear and a new Aarn pack to put through its paces, the Peak Aspiration. We drove to the North Egmont visitor centre where we pulled out bivis and got our heads down for the night, the bivis worked well in the rain and cold. The next morning we had a bit of a lie in then up at 7.30am for a breakfast of some Back Country supreme porridge then packed our bags and were walking by 8.00am.
We followed the 4 x4 maintenance track up to the TV repeater aerial and from there cut up to the snowline. On went our G12 crampons out came the axes and we were off at a reasonable rate, in fact I felt I was holding Tim back at one stage he was like a kid at the fair and it seemed he was determined to get a new summit record. We made good time plugging through the snow as we neared the summit, arriving on top around lunchtime. We got out the Back Country Ready-to-eat Mean Bean Lunch, yum. I plugged over to the north east side of shark tooth to check out the ice climbing possibilities, I knew it was too brittle and really not safe to climb and although I was disappointed I was still just happy to be on top of the mountain. It was time to go so we tracked about ½ way down the snow to a gentler gradient where we decided it was a good spot to do some self arrest practice, but instead we glissaded down the hill to give our weary legs a break. We then continued our slow descent down taking time to watch a skier carve it up as he came from the from the top. When we reached the Maketawa hut we met the skier we had been watching, he had unfortunately forgotten his tramping boots so walked out with us in a pair of Ugg boots. We arrived back at the car around 4.30, got changed, packed the car and headed for home. All in all a fantastic 30 hr round trip! |
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