It was August of 1992, my 5th day on the North Island of New Zealand. Because it was winter in the Southern Hemisphere, I was quickly learning that it was the rainy time of year – and how! All of my travel within the country was being done on a special travel pass that I had purchased before arriving. For a bargain price meant to encourage tourists to visit the country and use public transport, I was using bus, train and Inter-Island Ferry to get around.
On this date, the 7th, I had caught a bus in Auckland and headed south to the city of Hamilton. Late in the morning, I switched over to a smaller bus and sat up front next to the driver. We continued south through a lot of hilly, rugged country – very beautiful. For a while, we traveled along the coast of the Tasman Sea. The speed limit in New Zealand at that time was 100 KM/hr, but there weren’t many opportunities to do that for very long. Our bus arrived in the city of New Plymouth on the coast by mid-afternoon, a city of about 60,000 and the largest in the region.
The main reason I had wanted to visit this part of the country was to try to climb Mount Egmont, a big peak near the city. My research had led me to contact a fellow named Dick Mercer. I phoned him from the bus station in the city and he kindly came and picked me up and drove me all the way up to a locale called North Egmont, which was in Egmont National Park. He dropped me off at a climber’s shelter at the end of the road at an elevation of 3,140 feet. The shelter had an interesting history. It is called the Camphouse, and here is a bit of information from the Internet about it:
The Camphouse at North Egmont is one of the oldest surviving corrugated-iron buildings in the world. It is one section of barracks imported from Melbourne in 1855 to house Imperial troops in New Plymouth. After the last troops left in 1870, the colonial Armed Constabulary occupied the complex. For a few years in the mid-1870s, part of it was used as temporary housing for new immigrants to Taranaki. This part of the building was moved to North Egmont in 1891 for tourist accommodation. The hand-wrought iron sheets are several millimetres thick, and gun slits were cut in some of them.
We’ve just seen a new name, and it requires some explanation. The mountain is called Taranaki in the Māori language. The Māori word tara means mountain peak, and naki is thought to come from ngaki, meaning “shining”, a reference to the snow-clad winter nature of the upper slopes. It was also named Pukehaupapa and Pukeonaki by Māori who lived in the region in ancient times.
Captain Cook named it Mount Egmont on 11 January 1770 after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, a former First Lord of the Admiralty, who had supported the concept of an oceanic search for Terra Australis Incognita. Cook described it as “of a prodigious height and its top cover’d with everlasting snow,” surrounded by a “flat country … which afforded a very good aspect, being clothed with wood and verdure.”
When the French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne saw the mountain on 25 March 1772 he named it Pic Mascarin. He was unaware of Cook’s earlier visit.
It appeared as Mount Egmont on maps until 29 May 1986, when the name officially became “Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont” following a decision by the Minister of Lands. The Egmont name still applies to the national park that surrounds the peak and geologists still refer to the peak as the Egmont Volcano. It is the second-highest point on the North Island (8,261 feet) after Mount Ruapehu (9,177 feet).
So anyway, there I was at the shelter known as the Camphouse. It was a big place – I counted bunks for 32 people, but I had it all to myself. I stoked the fireplace and warmed the place up, then pondered the bit of a map of the north slopes of the mountain that Dick had left me. A fellow named Alistair came in, he was the caretaker. I paid him $8.00 NZ for the night, which was only $4.00 US. Although I had a big pack, sleeping bag and tent, I didn’t have any gear for snow or ice, so he loaned me a pair of really old-fashioned crampons and an ice axe. All evening I sat by the fire, while I ate, greased my boots and got my gear ready. The weather had turned absolutely foul – the wind shrieked and the rain came down in buckets. Just before 10:00 PM, 3 people arrived from Wellington, and a bit later, a large group from New Plymouth. All of them got dressed in their mountaineering garb and headed out into the night, to climb up to the next shelter in the dark. Not me, I stayed put and had a good night’s sleep.
It howled and poured all night. The next morning, the weather was still so foul that I waited a while. During a lull, I finally set out. There was a nice patch of bush just above the shelter, and right away I saw a North Island tomtit, a pretty little bird. It didn’t take long, however, before the rain started again, and the higher I went, the worse it got. I was walking on a road built for access to a TV repeater station. Finally, at around 5,000 feet, I arrived at a big hut – it was owned by a New Plymouth climbing club. What a surprise when I walked through the door – it was really nice, warm and dry. It had all the conveniences – electricity, hot water. There were plenty of people inside, but they weren’t in a very talkative mood. My Gore-tex had utterly failed me, and I was soaked. I set my pack down and ate a bit while I figured out what to do next.
The hut was owned by the club, but I soon learned that you had to be a member if you wanted to stay there. They had bunks for those spending the night, but not for me. I had already reached a height where I was surrounded by snow, but did I want to continue? My gear was sopping wet, and the idea of camping in my tent there or higher didn’t appeal to me. I’m certain that if I had been allowed to spend the night at the hut, I would have gone for the summit the next day, but that wasn’t an option. So, I packed up and left, heading back down the way I’d come. On the way, I met a large group from Auckland heading up to the hut. In that weather, though, I doubted anyone would try for the summit.
Back down at the shelter where I’d spent the night, I hung up all my wet gear to dry. A short walk took me down to the visitor center, where I met John, the manager. I gave him Alistair’s crampons and ice axe and we had a cup of tea. While there, I met a Brit named Peter who offered me a ride back to New Plymouth, which I gratefully accepted. After I gathered up my gear, we set out, but instead of the more direct route back to the city, he decided to take the round-the-mountain route. Yikes, he was a lousy, distracted driver, and just plain dangerous. Just at nightfall, we arrived back in the city where he dropped me off at a backpacker’s hostel. This was the only glimpse I even got of the peak the whole time I was there.
Mount Egmont
One last thing that’s worth mentioning, in my opinion, is this note I found on the Internet which talks about the rainfall.
The park receives massive annual rainfall. Moist westerlies from the Tasman Sea form Orographic precipitation when they reach Mount Taranaki and the adjacent Pouakai and Kaitake ranges. Since the area has high annual rainfall and a mild coastal climate there is a lush rainforest covering the foothills, a forest that is nationally significant for the total absence of beech trees (genus Nothofagus).
The mountain gets an average of over 80 inches of rainfall per year, so I guess what I experienced was par for the course. In any case, I certainly have soggy memories of my ill-fated attempt on Mount Egmont.