Tour des Sommets

Distance: 7.2 km.  Elevation low/high/total: 455/1054/766 m.

Difficulty: 9.4/10.  Scenic: 9.6/10

Sweet mama, this one is a workout!  Two of the taller peaks near Noumea and tough vertical scrambles both up and down.  Click pic for photo album and the gpx file is here.

This is a fairly brutal hike (at least for a couple of old mountain goats like us)!  But eight hours of persistence paid off and we are able to put this one in the books (or blog, nowadays).  Most folks, I believe, hike this route in a counter-clockwise direction.  One parks at the Auberge de Koghi, strolls to the waterfall and then climbs the very (VERY!) steep path to the top of Mount Mone and continue.  We went the other direction.  I think it was the right move, but either way is very tough.

Our route up was to climb My Bouo first and that route is very technical - involving mostly sharp rock navigating - much of it under rainforest cover so the rocks are covered with moss and very slippery.  The possibility of twisting an ankle or taking fall and having a very nasty landing is very real.  It took us 3.5 hours to scale the first peak.  But aside from numerous cuts and bruises, we made it and FTF'ed a geocache there.  Next, you hike/scramble the saddle over to the taller peak Mt Mone.  The view from both peaks and at many lcations all along the "hike" are quite spectacular.  We had lunch at Mt. Mone and then faced the daunting task of getting down off that peak.  Measured by our geotrack the slope exceeds 45 degrees for the better part of a full kilometer and the surface is slippery red mud with sharp embedded rock.  We did most of it sliding on our butts (my hiking shorts got destroyed).  Fortunately, I brought gloves else my hands would be shredded.  

This is a worthy hike but not one I'm likely to repeat soon given how truly dangerous it is.  It's not really hiking, it's rock climbing.  The views are great .... but so are they at several of the other peaks nearby which are much less technically challenging.  But ... we made it and now look forward to our next challenge in  a couple of weeks.