Summit Egmont

Mt Egmont
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After spending the night at the Camphouse we awoke rather dozily at 5.30 and packed up. The track began very gently, that was soon to change. After going gradually up for awhile the road turned to concrete, but it wasn’t nice smooth concrete it had big chunks of rocks in it and it got steeper and steeper as it went. The concrete led all the way up to Tahurangi Hut from here the real steep parts began. After the hut there was a short piece of scrambling over rocks then the stairs began. For the first 10 steps they were a nice change from the rocks and the concrete, but that was short lived. Eventually the steps stopped and we had a scroggin stop with a brilliant view out over New Plymouth and Taranaki. After the steps came the shingle scree, which at times was one step up and several back if you hit a spot wrong. We must have been going fairly quickly though as we overtook several groups on this part. Then the boulders began, they looked liked they’d be sweet relief form the shingle scree, but how wrong we were. They were large volcanic boulders that were deceptively long. Thankfully the boulders ended and we rounded the corner and dropped down into the crater before the final ascent to the summit. It was an amazing view from the top we could see out to Ruapehu, it was weird to be looking at it as we’re usually sitting on Ruapehu looking back at Egmont. We stopped in a little sheltered bit for some noodles then began the descent. We went down the same way as we came up till we hit the shingle scree, we decided that it would be quicker and much more fun to run down it, we couldn’t go down the track and groups of people were still coming up. We went to the right a little and flew down. It took us about 20mins to descend it when it took us over an hour to get up. Rose had a few tumbles in the scree, but Mr Cautious Marc didn’t fall once. Rose felt the effects of such a fast descent on her quads for the next few days.