CHAPTER 18
Mt. Taranaki dominates the landscape. You can see it towering above the horizon from a hundred miles away. The perfect epitome of a volcano, it’s usually surrounded by a cliché ring of clouds. At first we were content to gaze up at it from our beachside camp spot in New Plymouth, with the sun on our shoulders and a cold beer in our hands, but the longer we looked at it the more it drew us in.
Summiting mountains is not usually a predilection we share, so it was with great surprise that I found myself standing next to Kacey at 6am in the parking lot of the Egmont National Park visitor center, eagerly stuffing our backpack with food and gear for the day’s hike. It turned out to be, quite possibly, one of the hardest hikes we have ever done- 5200 feet vertical ascent, up steep slopes covered in loose scree, followed by a near vertical scramble over a disorganized mess of jagged lava rocks. A disproportionately small crater filled with ever present ice and snow met us at the top, and a final struggle up more loose gravel brought us to one of the most magnificent views in all of New Zealand.
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