Real hiking
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Thu 19 Jul 2012 06:39
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Have I mentioned that I don't like dirty scruffy
Tahiti?
But it has a few good walks. A couple of days ago a
team of five of us (me, Jon & Heather Turgeon from the USA and David &
Tamsin Kidwell from the UK) set off up Mount Aorai 2066m. I went, but Ali sadly
couldn't as we deemed it too far and too hard for someone with a dodgy knee. And
what a walk it was. The recommended way to do it is over two days staying
overnight in a hut. But we went for the one day expedition, the longest
continuous ridgewalk that any of us had ever done.
The trail starts at 600m, and climbs steadily for
11km to the summit, all of it along a ridge and requiring some hanging onto
fixed ropes. We were lucky to choose a day with almost no cloud (in common with
other tropical islands, Tahiti's mountains are usually shrouded in cloud, with
rain).
Here is a view looking back at the lower slopes
(you can see the trail, bottom right) with the nearby island of Mo'orea just
visible in the background. [The apostrophe in Tahitian signifies a glottal stop,
not a missed letter as in French or English, essential when you have so many
vowels and so few consonants. Five vowels in a row are common].
 Here is one of the party, David Kidwell off 'Twice
Eleven' (see AA Milne, 'Now we are six'), with the summit in view on
the upper left some kilometres away:
 And here is the party descending, with just a touch
of cloud on the summit:
 Most of the island's interior is steep and covered
with jungle; it is uninhabitable and almost uncultivatable. The ridge is
amazing, miles of it, just wide enough for a path with precipitous drops on both
sides - the picture above is an innocuous looking section, but a fixed rope is
needed to pass from where the people are standing to where the photo was taken.
A very strong wind was blowing, making balance really important. A great day
out.
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