Peak day! We got ready to climb Travers Peak in ok weather but suddenly the weather changed to heavy wind and rain falls ? Definitely not the best time to be up on a mountain ridge!
It was cloudy when we started hiking in the morning, neither wind nor rain in sight. We hoped it would clear up once we are above the tree line and that we would get a beautiful view from the top of Travers Peak. This didn’t happen though…. Instead, the weather changed to its worse with heavy rain falls and a lot of wind.
Nevertheless, we made it up to Travers Peak without any difficulties.
We even found three cans of beer in a little pond! Timo was very pleased when he fished them out and all of them were still unopened ?
The plan was to decend the mountain on its other side so that we would meet the TA trail once we are down in the valley on St. James walkway. The path seemed to disappear when we passed the top. We kept on following the ridge but the sight was bad and the rain and the wind were getting worse.
I suddenly slipped on some wet grass and slided down for a few meters. When I came to a stop I heard something behind me and Timo slipped as well… As we couldn’t see if the „trail“ would get any better soon, we thought it is a good time to turn around. It was quite difficult to climb back to the peak from the other side and we were both afraid to slip on the grass again.
Decending back to the forest, we both were almost blown over by the wind a few times. As closer as we got to the tree line, the more fun we had though ?
Back in the forest, we descended quickly back to the spot where we camped last night. Going from there, we decided to take a trail that leads to the upper start of the St. James Walkway. From there it should take about 2 days to get back to the Te Araroa Trail.
We got to the parking lot of the trail head. There we found a nice shelter where pitched our tent to escape the rain ⛺
We made some yummy warps with Nutella and banana slices, a perfect treat after such an exciting and exhausting day!
