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The place: New Zealand’s Egmont National Park. The year: 2017. Backpacker’s staff was on its semiannual Editors’ Choice trip, and we were about two-thirds of the way through a trek around Taranaki, the snow-capped peak that sits at the hub of Egmont, a perfect, 132-square-mile circle of waterfalls and dense, gnarled goblin forest. For days it had rained almost nonstop, leaving us to try and dry soaked-through layers by the fire at the New Zealand Department of Conservation’s huts.
That morning, we woke up early to catch the sunrise over Taranaki’s slopes. At first, we weren’t certain we’d be able to see the peak at all; a blanket of fog covered the sky. But as the top of Taranaki began to appear through the mist, I steadied my phone against a post and streamed the view to Backpacker’s readers. See it for yourself in this straight-from-the-trail throwback video.