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.