5th January 2022
I headed up Taranaki Maunga early one morning to Warwick Castle to catch the sunrise and get a few photos. Warrick Castle is not actually a castle, but a crag high on the east side of the Taranaki Maunga which is a favourite play ground for local rock climbers.
I got up at 1.30am, had breakfast and off I went. The moon was reasonably full which made it easy to see while tramping. I was on the track from the ski field to Tahurangi lodge and as I came around one of the corners there was a kiwi (a flightless bird and New Zealand's icon) in the middle of the track...a bit of a bonus as these birds are generally nocturnal and not often spotted in the wild.
I headed up flower pot ridge...aptly named as there is a terracotta flower pot marking where you start your ascend up the ridge.
There aren't any visible tracks and there are patches where you have to find your way through knee high foliage. I got there in time to catch the pink hour...in the morning light it's quite a stunning place. Looking back down the slopes I could see Tahurangi lodge. It wasn't long before the sun peaked over the horizon and lit up the moss covered slopes. One of the reasons for heading up was to check to see if there were any places to put a tent (it's quite steep) as I was keen to do an over night trip and fit in some milky way photography on a moonless night.
29th January 2022
A couple of weeks later I headed back up in the afternoon with my tent and my pack filled with all the necessary warm clothes, safety gear and of course a considerable amount of photography equipment.....I had extra thermals, heat packs, heat pads, thermal bivvy, warm jackets and a decent sleeping bag...along with the usual safety gear, including a PLB. The weather up this mountain can change very quickly and can turn bitterly cold so you need to be prepared. With all the extra gear, my trip was some what slower than my first trip.
It was quite windy when I first got there however the tent was in a sheltered spot on the lee side of the crag. I was prepared to pack up and head back down the mountain if the wind changed direction and started hitting the tent. Getting blown down the mountain in a tent sounded like fun, but I'm not sure I could nail the landing.
The wind dropped completely and it was an amazingly clear warm night which meant I could leave the tent flap open and the camera running capturing star trails while I dozed and waited for the galactic core to come up. I left the camera running for 45 minutes, taking a total of 111 images that were then stacked on top of each other in Photoshop creating a star trail and showing the amount the earth rotated in relation to the stars during the 45minutes that the camera was running.
The core finally came up and I was able to get a 5 image vertical panoramic shot with the galatic kiwi just above the horizon and the moon just starting to appear on the horizon.
I then focused on capturing a 180 deg horizontal pano of the milky way arch consisting of 22 images stitched together
By this time it was it was about 5am so time to catch a bit of sleep before sun rise at 6.30am.
I dozed until my alarm went off, I was quite comfortable in my sleeping bag and not really keen to vacate it...I opened the tent flap and peered out, the sun was just starting to appear on the horizon. I didn't have time to get out and set up the camera so I shot from inside the tent.
I managed to drag myself out of the tent to capture a few more images and then sat enjoying the view and the warm rays of the sun while eating a bun for breakfast.
Once the sun had dried the dew on my tent I packed up and headed home. It was a leisurely tramp back down the mountain, stopping and talking to adventures on the track that were just starting their day and heading for the summit.
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