Mt Wilhelm is 4509m and while Mt Cook is 3764m, you can walk rather than climb, to the top of Mt Wilhelm. I joined a group of 5 trampers organised by Papua New Guinea Trekking Adventures.

We each had our own guide which maximised our chance of reaching the top as you could go at your own speed and if one had to return it did not cut the trip short for anyone else. The first day was an easy 3-hour walk largely through forest, to the bottom lake where there were a couple of basic huts. The best chance of good views from the top is dawn before the cloud comes in so we set out for the summit, under a starry sky, at 1am the next morning.

The first three hours of the six-hour ascent were the hardest, slippery clay and unrelentingly upwards. Once we began to work our way upward across a granite base it became easier until the final scramble over rock to the summit. While it was good to be there the summit never emerged from cloud and so my guide and I didn’t stay long and rapidly descended out of the cloud to where the views were fantastic.

After a day “in recovery” back at Betty's Lodge at the foot of the mountain I set out with a porter and guide to walk down to Brahmin. The three-day walk from Chimbu province down into Madang, was an insight into village and rural life. We stayed one night with the elementary school teacher in Sinpoas (Snowpass) Village and met a hunter who had just killed a beautiful tree kangaroo with a stone. PNG gardens are fantastic, often built on near vertical slopes they are the mainstay of the rural population who seldom have access to wages.