An amusingly named summit that’s annoyingly in our way. A vertical 500 metre climb at 7am was tough going for me! Once we were up and off though we found the track absolutely packed, with Maori families all jogging up and back down. Even the nannas were getting stuck in. Awesome! I don’t know if the hill had special significance or if it was a special day maybe, or if the local white kiwis just weren’t into jogging. Who knows, but it sure was a popular forest track :) Flippin’ windy at the top too.
Finding it rather tricky to know how to pronounce the place names here, or even remember them! When we have rest days, watching Maori news is brilliant as you start to hear how things ought to sound and get a sense for the language. But I’ve found the only way so far to remember names is to use word association … and hence this peak = Te Ranga-saurus Rex ;)
We were pleasantly surprised by the Russell Forest Walkway, the track was in good condition and progress was fast. We were up on top of Te Ranga in no time.
AMAZING views. Felt like we were either in the Andies or Lord of the Rings ( my obvious metaphor for epic landscapes ). But it’s true. Bloody awesome. So glad I came up. Made the arduous journey there seem totally worth the pain. ( Most people come up the easy track from the south to the hut – we’ll be heading out that way I reckon! )
Without doubt the 360 degree panorama from the top is the best views we’ve had in New Zealand so far. Fun climb up too, glad that I did it twice! (I came up yesterday without Nicky) The East Ridge looks pretty impressive, no route this way though!
We met up with my Mum & Dad over Christmas and explored Rotorua and the Tongariro National Park. Lots of spectacular volcanic terrain and our first sight of snow up on top of Mt Ruapehu.
Woo hoo, we made it up alive! It wasn’t actually that bad, bloody steep, but worth it for the stunning views up here.
We’re building a tin foil rocket! … No not really. It’s a rickety trig point. If you don’t know what a trig point is ( I didn’t til recently ) it’s one of these triangular structures you find on the top of peaks, used to measure the position and height of mountains for cartography. Apparently? :) They seem to come in varying levels of robustness. And this one is on it’s last (two) legs.
We’d been flicking through a booklet on the chronology of the Tararua Range in the hut last night, depressingly it listed everyone to be killed or badly injured and airlifted to safety over the years… One of the earliest entries was this chap, Ralph Wood, whose cross is at the summit of Twin Peak. Poor bloke expired on the way to the safety of Waiopehu Hut in a really bad storm, his friends eventually made it to the hut only to find it blown away..
