Yay, the weekend! It's amazing not being on call. That's all I have to say about that. So Josh had a hike (called tramping here) that he picked out up on Taranaki. Saturday was absolutely beautiful, so we decided to hike up. First, since we could see the mt from Hawera, we went up the water tower. All 209 steps! Yay.
Here's the view from the top--pretty!
This was one of the signs up in the Tower--it's a bit hard to read, but on the right you can see this kid (he was 17 at the time) doing a handstand on the top rail-thingy. EEKS! The story came out during the renovation of the Tower in 2004.
And now we're on the way to Dawson Falls visitors center, where we'll get on the Fantham's Peak trail and walk up stairs and up hill for 4 straight hours (minus lunch time and the millions of breaks I had to take cause I can't walk up that many stairs).
Here's a picture of the hut we stayed in that night during the winter--it's bolted to the ground with cables that were about an inch thick. It gets just a bit windy up there.
Josh in the goblin forest! Named for all the gnarled trees and mosses hanging all over them. It doesn't really translate to pictures, but cool nonetheless.
I love the self timer. However, neither Josh nor I can figure out how we set up the camera on this angle....
See those clouds behind us? On the right? We're higher than them!!
Josh's hair is getting long. I want to put it in pigtails.
Gorgeous sunset!!!
Syme Hut, NOT covered with ice.
That's Taranaki (apparently saying Mt Taranaki is redundant, as 'tara' means mountain peak) up close and personal!
And what is this????? This is what we woke up to on Sunday. You should see the video on Josh's facebook--it takes too long to get it on here!
Now, we had a gorgeous Saturday, not even windy up at the peak! Went to bed in the cozy little hut with a few new friends, and woke up to crazy howling gale force winds and visibility not great. We stayed up in the hut till about noon, hoping that maybe it would get better...not so much! The way down took about half as long, was wet and cloudy! But at least the visibility got much better after we got about halfway down.
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