Mount Tongariro

So we just had like, you know, a break where we went and met with some friends from Palmy.

We drove halfway to the Tongariro.

Yeah.

Mount Ruapehu and met up with some friends.

Yeah.

Like, the views you get of, like, the lake and out to, um, Mount, uh, Tongariro and Ngauruhoe, they are f- few and fleeting, so...

And then the rest of the time you're, like, in, tucked in the shelter of the bush, um, under the trees, so you're not getting blasted by the wind.

Yeah.

I went overseas when I was 27 and had five years living over there, so didn't get back to New Zealand until my early 30s.

Since then, I've had so many trips and I've loved my time in, on places like the volcanoes, Taranaki, Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, Tongariro.

It's always been a wonderful thing for me, and that's where I, I, I got into climbing to start with when I joined the Alpine Club and did the alpine instruction course in 2002.

So I was gonna ask, uh, your gateway into it when you got back, was that through the Alpine Club or through tramping clubs, or did you do solo trips as well?

And so I got a few nice trips into some of the great walks through being a member of the senior exec.

So that happened, and I started to make a bit more of an effort to do things as well.

By then I'd had my first son, Ben, and so he was extra weight in the backpack on trips like up to Mueller Hut or Tongariro Crossing, that sort of trip.

But yeah, it was really since I joined the Alpine Club that things really got underway.