Tongariro Crossing and Mt Doom

One of the trips we had most looked forward to was the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. It has been named New Zealand’s best one day walk and for good reason. The Tongariro trek takes you past Mt. Ngaraghoe (say Nah-rah-hoe-ee) a.k.a. Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Mines of Moria part) and is distanced at 18km, so not just a casual stroll in the park. We are honestly not on a LotR tour of New Zealand but the last few days makes it feel like it a bit. To be honest, travelling across NZ is a bit like stepping into Middle Earth as the scenery is so dramatic and other-worldy.

Back to the story, we selected the “late” pick up for the walk which was at 06:30, the early pick up was 05:30, and we made our way across early morning Taupo and towards Tongariro National Park; the drive took around an hour and a half and was pretty spectacular (running out of adjectives to describe NZ). We did have one brief picture stop on the way.

Mt Ruahepu

We started our walk by crossing the flat plain towards Soda Springs – a small waterfall – which took around one hour or so. The terrain was pretty flat as I said but the ground was still rocky and gave fantastic views of the three mountains (Mt Tongariro, Mt Ngaraghoe and Mt Ruapehu). Even without being snow covered, Mt. Doom (that’s what we called it all day and that’s what I’ll always call it) looked ominous. Whereas as the other two mountains either had some green colour to them or snow-capped peaks, Mt. Doom was the classic conical shaped volcano and had black sides and seemed to rise menacingly from the earth – it looked like a place where goblins and trolls would live if I’m being honest.

 

Soda Springs

After our walk along the flat plain we reached the Devil’s Staircase, a series of stairs built into the track that led you to the higher ground on the ridge of the penultimate crater. The walk was pretty hard going; it was long, the stairs numerous and the weather difficult (quite hot but with strong winds) and it took us another hour to traverse. 

Once we reached the top of the Devil’s Staircase we found ourselves in the South Crater, a barren expanse of welcome flat land that must have been a kilometre round. It gave us our first view of the walk ahead of us to the summit of the red crater…which looked very far away. At this point people could break off and walk to the summit of Mt Doom, although it was not an option for us for four main reasons: One, timescale – the walk would take three hours and we would not be able to do the walk up Mt Doom and the rest of the walk due to the last bus time; two, fitness, neither Nicola nor I were in particularly good shape and the walk was graded as “dangerous” and the walk uphill looked almost vertical and the ground beneath your feet was not a track but loose sand/volcanic rock like walking up a sand dune; three, safety, it didn’t look particularly safe especially considering how out of shape the two of us were; and four, we didn’t pack our swords and war axes in case of goblin attacks but nevertheless, we were able to go around the mountain and didn’t need to go through the mountain so we cut our chance of goblin attacks to a minimum.

 

After we walked across the South Crater we began our ascent of the Red Crater, which was harder than the Devil’s Staircase mainly because there were no stairs and the ground under foot was loose rock/shingle or “scree” as our driver had called it, and two, it was a LOT windier and colder since we had walked on to higher ground and we were no longer shielded by the mountain wall above us. It was a tough walk to the top and it took us another hour or so and by the time we reached the top we were getting pretty tired. The views were amazing though, we got to see the Emerald Lakes which are three lakes formed like those in Rotorua i.e. geothermal pools, which were pretty nice.

 

This was as far as we were allowed to walk due to a volcanic eruption that happened in August 2012. The volcano erupted (you can see the smoke/“fizz” that is still coming from the peak in the photos of the Emerald Lakes) for the first time in decades which means the complete Alpine Crossing is blocked half way along. Although, instead of descending down to the far end as previously, you turn around and descend the way you came which still clocks in at 18km.

And so began our long trudge back to the bus. We slowly made it back to the bus (spotting what we are convinced is The Lonely Mountain from the closing scene of The Hobbit) after stopping frequently to catch our breath and take more pictures and eventually got back by around 15:00, some six hours after we started. Yet despite now possessing incredibly sore feet and wind chilled bodies we loved every minute of the trek and it was definitely a highlight of our travels so far.