We were told that there was excellent climbing at the Pinnacles; a few hours hike along the Mount Somers track. We wanted a warm-up hike before heading towards Stewart Island and figured it was a great idea to combine a nice overnight trip with some challenging climbing.
We arrived at the parking lot at 5:30pm and figured it should be easy to reach the Pinnacles hut before dark. We had eaten well that day, had lots of water and were in pretty good shape...how hard could it be? I am not sure if my problem was overestimating my own fitness level or underestimating the trail but the first climb of the hike knocked me on my butt. Literally. I believe I felt every potato chip and chocolate bar (and brie cheese and bottle of champagne) I'd eaten since arriving in New Zealand. Iain was a gem, he was my personal cheering squad and he didn't stop encouraging me over the next three days. After the first big, big push up hill I changed my perspective on the hike and it got easier mentally although it was still challenging physically.
We arrived at the Pinnacles hut about 3 hours after we left the parking lot - almost right on the Department of Conservation estimate. We had passed a number of hikers heading out and they all had good things to say about the hike and the climbing although we were warned that there was a lot of loose rock on the sport climbing routes and we'd likely need helmets. Doh!
We spent the first evening hiking up through pine and fern forests, over the first ridge and then down to a creek bed. We followed the creek up for about an hour and a half watching the evening sun dance on the rippling water, hopping from water worn boulders to mossy logs. We could hear an abundance of bird life but didn't see much besides shadows flitting from branch to branch in the twilight.
The Pinnacles hut was a beautiful sight when we arrived. The light had faded to a deep dusk and all we could see was the outline of the porch against the black of the mountains behind. The stars had started to come out and after we had settled our gear onto our bunks we could see the southern cross hanging over the fields and towns that lined the horizon. It was a gorgeous night but I was too tired to fully appreciate it. After a quick dinner of pasta and a quick game of crib punctuated with huge yawns and eye rubbing, Iain and I gave in and curled up on our bunks.
The next day was another beauty - hot and clear. We could appreciate how high we had hiked as we looked out from the porch, the view was a perfect V down towards the base of the mountains. We could also see the Pinnacles behind the hut, huge formations of columnar basalt touched the sky with smaller formations of intermediate tuffs sitting like fingers reaching towards the cliffs. The scale was hard to take in with the eye - everything looked much closer than it was in reality and a ten minute hike became 30 minutes when we headed out to climb.
We only spent a half day climbing. The rock was, as we had been told, loose in spots and there were only a few routes we felt comfortable enough on to climb without helmets. The views from the routes were incredible, it really was stupendous climbing. We spent our morning climbing the tuff formations and wished we'd had the gear to climb in the basalt, however it required equipment for traditional climbing which we did not bring. That afternoon as we sat munching crackers and peanut butter with manuka honey we decided that instead of continuing to climb we would follow the Mount Somers Circle track and turn our adventure into a nice three day hike rather than an overnight climbing trip. With the decision made we packed up our rope and harnesses and headed back to the Pinnacles hut to find the trail up into the mountains.
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