Thursday 30 November 2023
Mount Pirongia 2023
Three months ago, September 2-3, I led a small group of friends up Mt Pirongia again. Again, we had a great time. This trip was initiated because one person whom I hadn’t tramped with before wanted to join my Rees-Dart trip this month (blog post forthcoming!) and I wanted to do a reasonably challenging one-night trip with them first.
We did the same route as last time: up to the hut via the Tirohanga Track, and then return to Grey Road car park via Mahaukura Track. It’s not the shortest route but it has good views, some fun climbing up and down chains, and not too much mud.
In our group of seven we had four people new to tramping in New Zealand. They all had a really good attitude, which is the most important thing — it’s good to have people who, when they step in a deep mud hole, laugh rather than cry. Some found it harder than others but everyone agreed the trip was well worth it.
The weather forecast was pretty bad, but it turned out that the weather on the first day was very good. We even had clear skies at the summit, which is often not the case even when it’s sunny in the rest of the Waikato. The second day had cloud cover but we got back to the cars before it started raining.
