Dowdeswell Family Pages

New Millennium Delphiniums

Mt Egmont
New Zealand has an amazing variety of beautiful scenery packed into a relatively small area. One summer Charles (the more handsome fellow you will see in some of the pictures) and I decided to do a little tramping in areas that can be reached within 2 hours drive of Wanganui. In other words, most of the lower North Island. The images that follow and on the Atene & Taupo page were mostly taken on those tramps. We have more images of New Zealand on our New Zealand Scenery Wallpapers Pages.
Egmont National Park
There are many tracks on and around Mt Egmont (Taranaki) and images 1 to 9 were taken on the track to the summit which, from the highest car park (1150 metres) is an easy 8 hour round trip for the moderately fit. The first two shots were from about 1300 metres:

Images 3 through 6 are taken on the steep scree slope above and a little to the left of Charles in image 2:

Chocolate break, and shortly afterwards.... how much further?:

The crater just below the summit:	Yours truly feeling on top of things:

In the image below, you are looking North West from the summit of Mt Taranaki, over the crater. If you click on this image for an enlargement you will see the tops of Mts Ruapehu and Ngaruahoe peeping over the clouds, directly above the colourful rock formation to the left. The dark arc above the snow in the right of the image is the edge of Egmont National Park where stands of native trees and bush give way to farmland. Egmont National Park is almost completely circular, echoing the conical shape of Mt Taranaki.
	You might enjoy this Link to New Zealand National Parks
It is an easy drive from Wanganui to Mt Egmont and we often take visitors there, to see the mountain and also to visit Dawson Falls, a small waterfall in the native bush near the carpark partway up the mountain. Here are some photos taken on those trips:




Our daughter and two grandsons from Sydney discovering snow on Mt Egmont - probably the closest place to Wanganui to enjoy a 'snow' experience.	Tetsu and Yoko on a swing bridge on the way to the Dawson Falls