Taupo & Mt. Doom

We took a much-anticipated trip into the centre of the North Island last weekend, to check out lake Taupo and hike the Tongariro crossing. 

Taupo is quite a popular destination for both tourists and locals. The town of Taupo sits on the north side of lake Taupo, which is actually the caldera of New Zealand's largest volcano. The lake measures 616 square kilometres...not bad for a crater! The volcano is dormant, but there is a fair amount of geothermal activity in the area, including hot springs, geysers (not to be confused with geezers), and boiling mud pools. 

The goal on this trip was to hike Tongariro crossing, which passes between Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngaruhuoe. Kiwis have been doing this hike for years, but it got very popular amongst tourists a few years ago, because Mt. Ngaruhuoe became really famous. 

Recognize this from anywhere? (FYI, you can see the ski resort Mt. Rhuapehu - also a volcano - in the background)

Now?

Also known as Mt. Doom, Ngaruhuoe was featured prominently as Sauron's lair in the Lord of the Rings movies. Naturally, this was why Emma wanted to do the hike. Justin decided to humor her, since it was Valentine's day and all.

The timing worked out perfectly to invite a whole group into the Valentine's day action. Emma's friend from medical school and her husband (Caroline & Jeremy) happened to be travelling the North Island and were keen to do the hike, and Justin's long-lost high school friend Holly was also in the country and able to join us.

We started our day with a 4am wake-up call. The trek is notoriously touristy, and we wanted to get on the pathway before the crowds. Also, it takes a while to actually get hiking. Because this is a one-way hike, we had to park our vehicle at one end of the pass, and then get a shuttle to the other end of the pass to start the hike. It was 7am by the time we got walking.

After just a few hours sleep and knowing that we had quite the climb ahead, this was just the sign we wanted to see:

We assumed that this sign was referring to fairweather hikers. Not Canadian hikers.

And then it started to snow, and we realized that the sign was probably for real (no photos of snow were taken, due to freezing fingers). We trekked for about an hour and a half before hitting the turn-off for the Mr. Ngaruhuoe path. By that, I mean that there was a big sign pointing to a face of rock and skree.  Oh, and a sign telling us to beware falling rocks (more on those later).

The walk (death struggle) to the summit of Mt. Ngaruhuoe/Doom was quite strenuous. We didn't take many photos, but this image (stolen from Google) gives a sense of the incline.

Arriving at the top made it absolutely worthwhile though. We were told that it's not even worth doing the hike on a cloudy day. But when the sun comes out, the view is absolutely stunning. It was somewhat cloudy on the day that we'd chosen, but we happened to get to the summit right as the clouds cleared (we might have been guilty of a bit of schadenfraude when it clouded over right as we began to descend).

The view from the top (2291m):

The crater.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Justin standing over the crater.

Emma re-enacting the end of Lord of the Rings, pretending to throw her engagement ring into the crater. Justin did not find this particularly funny.

The group.

One last photo from the top.

Getting back down to the main pathway was a bit of a challenge, filled with skree skiing and dodging rolling boulders (some larger than our heads). We were glad to make it down in one piece and couldn't resist having one last look up at the peak before we continued with the rest of the hike.

The remainder of the crossing offered stunning views of remnants of volcanic activity.

Another crater.

Crater lakes. There was steam rising from the earth off to the right. We also hit some patches of steam while hiking Mt. Ngaruhuoe.

After stopping for a glass of wine at the lakes, we embarked on the last 10km of the crossing, finally getting some good views of lake Taupo.

These switchbacks look like they go forever. They felt like they went forever too.

We finally made it back to our car at 4:05pm. Holly was determined to do the hike in under 9 hours, and we just made it. We had just enough energy to drive back to Taupo, have a quick dinner, and fall into bed.

On Sunday, we walked out to some natural hot springs, called Spa Thermal park. It was an incredible treat for our achy muscles, and we couldn't believe that this little natural oasis is still free to the public. It was incredible to see waterfalls of hot water, and the pools flowed into the adjacent Waikato River, so we were able to easily adjust the surrounding temperature by getting just a bit closer to the river.

We could have stayed all day at the pools, but the beer connoisseurs (Justin & Jeremy) decided that our trip wouldn't be complete without checking out the local brewery, the Crafty Trout. In a familiar plot twist, what started as one beer turned into 6 hours at this fun pub. We blame a highly entertaining game called Stump for our prolonged stay (for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump_(game)). We were such good patrons that we even got to meet the brewmaster (Justin interrupted his dinner to ask for homebrewing tips).

All-in-all, a great weekend adventure. 

Coast-to-Coast

A couple of weekends ago, we took a break from our excursions and opted to stay in Auckland for some urban hiking. We tackled the Coast-to-Coast walkway, a 16km trek across the narrowest part of New Zealand (aka 'the Neck'). The route weaves through the city and involves summiting a couple of Auckland's larger volcanos.

Our walk began on the eastern coast, just a couple of blocks from our apartment. The first main 'attraction' was Albert Park. Adjacent to the University of Auckland campus, this park has plenty of mature trees (Justin's favourite) for climbing or studying under. This one was the most mature:

We then walked over to Auckland's answer to central park: the Domain. This park is the home to the Auckland Museum, as well as several sports fields. We still haven't seen anyone playing frisbee here, but there's always some sort of cricket going on.

The Auckland Museum:

We're saving the museum for a rainy day, but we did check out the Wintergardens, two large greenhouses nestled into a corner of the park. Emma spent a good fifteen minutes taking photos of lilypads here.

They were very photogenic.

The walk then took us to Mt. Eden, the tallest volcano in Auckland. There was some sort of touristy cultural event going on, which we may have interrupted. We figured that this interruption would probably just add to the appeal for the tourists. Mt Eden offered some great views of downtown Auckland, and also had a pretty neat crater (although craters are starting to feel a little passe).

Justin patiently waited for an eruption, to no avail.

After Mt. Eden, the walk started to become typical Kiwi. By that, I mean disorganized and poorly signposted.  Up until this point in the walk, there had been nice yellow markers on almost every block, pointing us in the correct direction. We knew that we needed to get to Cornwall Park, and we could see which direction we needed to walk (towards the distant obelisk), but when we descended, the markers became few and far between. 

Naturally, Justin had a map, but New Zealand foiled us once again by having street signs that pointed in the wrong direction (this could only happen here). After some superb orienteering, we managed to get on track again. We decided that all of our extra walking entitled us to an ice cream at our next stop: Cornwall Park.

Cornwall Park is a massive park ensconcing a hill, called One Tree Hill (not to be confused with the previously popular WB TV show, although the show actually got its name from the Hill in a roundabout sort of way...or so says Wikipedia). The Hill itself actually has hundreds of trees, although it was apparently named for one in particularly. This 'One Tree' has actually been chopped down numerous times, most recently by Maori activists, lending the nickname 'None Tree Hill'.

The highlight of our walk through One Tree Hill was the bold sheep. These sheep seem to be used to humans meandering through their fields, and are not nearly as timid as most. This one had a prolonged staring competition with Justin. We finally decided to move on. A hundred feet later, we looked back, and the sheep was still staring at him.

More sheep:

Following Cornwall Park, the signposts reappeared, and we made it fairly painlessly to the West coast.

More to come soon about our weekend spent in the caldera of NZ's largest volcano, and our Hobbit-esque trek up Mt Doom.