With the calendar turning to June, the days grow short and the nights cool. Soon the Tararuas will be covered in a blanket of snow, but the peaks (for now) are still relatively accessible. We began our ascent at the Western trailhead, Otaki Forks. If you look closely along the right slope of the hill in the centre foreground, you can see a little shimmer coming off the river flat where we started.
The bush is fairly lush up to Field Hut, but quickly gives way to high-country tussock above 900 metres. Luckily, the clouds were hanging out at 1200-1300 metres, so above them we had clear sky (well, not on the way back down, but what's a tramp without a little weather?).
The picture below of the moonrise was taken from Kime Hut, the icebox where we spent the night.
Well, to be fair, we only spent part of the night there, as we got up at 3:30 AM to summit Mt Field and watch the moon set. It turned from bright silver to pumpkin-orange as it set below the clouds, leaving us in total darkness with the Southern Cross low on the opposite sky and the band of Milky Way stretching at an oblique angle from horizon to horizon. Before heading back to bed to warm up, we sat and mused at how small we are, two specs on a tiny planet looking inward from the edge of the galaxy.
Soon the sun rose from the same Eastern sky where the moon had risen the night before. As the wind and clouds were rising rapidly, we scrambled up to the peak of Mt Hector, at the far right of the picture below.
And here's the view from the summit of Mt Hector. Looking to the East . . .
. . . and to the South.
The coolest part of this experience was the fact that this is the highest peak of the Tararuas we see in the distance when looking North from the window of our flat in Wellington on a clear day. Now we can point to it and say, "I've been there."
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