“A Mish a Day” #95 Sweet Sunsets – Part One. Pyramid(1598m). Hakatere Conservation Area. 3.10.2017. With all of the advancements in technology we (humans) seem to spend more and more time looking at our devices. People are far more likely to see a sunset over an epic environment on their phone than in person. The real thing is much, much better and with a little bit of effort you can witness something that can never be replicated by any sort of modern technology. Real is better than fake, so to get the proper experience you’ll need some boots, a pack and the motivation to go somewhere awesome!
Pyramid(1598m) is a ‘small’ peak compared with its bigger brothers in the Wild Mans Brother Range, but has no problem delivering on epic views of both the Lake Heron Basin and the giant, jagged peaks of the Arrowsmith Range. I travelled deep into Hakatere country with my girlfriend at the time, and we had two nights and the day inbetween to play with. After arriving at the small car park at the entrance to the Cameron Valley late afternoon, we found a good campsite to climb Pyramid(1598m) from. Our spot was less than one hours easy walk away from the car park, and as an added bonus it had great views up and down the magnificent Cameron Valley. As we had our dinner we watched the sky change from a grey / blue to many different light colours from red to purple, yellow to orange. It was another glorious sunset in Hakatere Conservation Park, and we were lucky enough to have a front row seat for the show. A sunset will only last about ten minutes, however those minutes are usually the moments most remembered from that day. This sunset was incredible and it sent us to the warmth of our sleeping bags, happy and excited about tomorrow’s adventure. So to the trickle of the Cameron River we drifted off to sleep and had dreams of standing on the top of a mountain…
An early-ish start was needed from camp, as we had some ground to cover if we wanted to get to the summit of Pyramid(1598m). The first problem to solve was getting through the wall of Matagouri that lined the lower south west faces of Pyramid(1598m). Matagouri is a constant foe in many parts of Aotearoa, and on many occasions I have just put my head down and hoped for the least amount of scratches as possible. Luckily for us there was a trail blazed by the many sheep that live in the valley, and with care we managed to get through the prickly barrier without too many scratches. After the maze was negotiated, it was a straight forward, slow grind up to get to the base of the north west ridge, which then led to the summit. The higher up we got the more impressive the views became. It was obvious we had made a good choice and we were in for a treat once when we finally made it to the top…
