Lava gorges scar the sides of Mt Taranaki
Day 1 started well, as did most of the days, but it soon got back into the swing of clouding over and starting to rain. I'd decided to follow the higher alpine route for the views (as opposed to the route through the forest), and after getting up the aptly named Puffer – a bloody steep track that I thought would never end – I clambered around the mountain to Dawson Falls heading for Lake Dive, and that's when the cloud kicked it. I could see it approaching from the west, in a big thick rolling mass, and before ten minutes was up I was surrounded by cloud, with a visibility of about 20 metres and a temperature drop from boiling down to bloody cold; yes, the weather comes in pretty damn quickly on the coast, especially on the mountains.
Still, the rain kept off until I reached the hut at Lake Dive, and then it decided to kick right in. Luckily the hut I was in had a stove with heaps of wood, and it wasn't long before I had a roaring fire going, slowly drying out my sodden clothes. When I arrived at the hut I was alone, quite a rarity on a popular walk like the AMC, but soon I had company in the shape of Jacek (pronounced 'Yatsik'), a Kiwi who had come over from Poland with his family when he was 11, back in the bad old days of martial law and Solidarity. He was very interesting company, and we decided to walk together for the rest of the trip, especially as the weather had made the track a little more slippery than normal, and a broken ankle is a bit of a bummer if you're on your own.
