Honestly, the walk was exactly what I thought it would be like. The walk was hard right from the start. The road twisted and turned and was unrelentingly steep nearly all the way, in a strange way it was almost like a roller coaster track. The people up the front moved to the back within 30 minutes and were replaced by new more motivated people who stayed up the front the entire time. I attempted to stay up the front but about halfway up the pain and the tiredness hit me like a 10-ton truck. I fell back to a few of my other friends who weren't too far behind but it was enough for me to be at a steady pace.
As I was waiting for my other friends to catch up I realized that we'd come out of the treeline and you could see both Greymouth and Runanga, for me this put our small west coast community into a different perspective, I could see where I live, where I've grown up. I could see all the little places that before had been hidden away from me seeing them and in a way it was almost inspiring. After we started walking again there was a lot of complaining about the pain and we made small talk about how we wished we had stayed in the van or trying to find places to hide in the bush so we wouldn't have to walk anymore. Of course, these were all joking comments that were trying to lighten the pain that we all felt.
Eventually, after almost 3 hours we made it to the top. The view was stunning. I could see all the way from Rapahoe to Reefton. You could see the ocean wrapping around the Point Elizabeth hill and if you looked the other way you could see Lake Brunner. The pictures were stunning, to say the least. It was almost like being in a 3D map where you could see whatever you wanted. Running back down was a completely different experience. There was a group of us at the front who sprinted down and made it back to the vans in half an hour. It was painful and tiring but it made the trip so much more fun.
Even though at the start I didn't get why we were doing the climb and I didn't get the metaphor I soon realized why we were there and how it tied back to Year 11 and my schooling. The pain of walking up the mountain relates to the hard work of getting credits and finishing assignments, you want to give up and go back down but then as soon as you get to the top it's 100% worth it. The view correlates with ending Year 11 with excellence and the feeling of pride you get as you see the end.
