When Ruapehu's crater lake fills up, there is a risk that another lahar will burst through the crater walls. A lahar in 1953 killed more than 150 people as the flood destroyed a railway bridge. This phenomena is now intensely monitored and a similar lahar in 2007 past without any human injuries.
Mount Ngauruhoe is better known as Mount Doom (we can actually pronounce that) from the Lord of the Rings and this is the mountain Frodo and Sam are destined to climb to destroy the ring and be rid of the evil forever!
The National Park has many hiking trails, the most famous of which is the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a 20km hike that traverses the mountain, passing craters, old lava flows, hot springs and beautifully covered lakes. This is generally considered one of the best one day walks in the country and one of the finest in the World. We were told that you have to be reasonably fit to tackle it because there are very steep inclines over volcanic terrain.
The track is a one way track and how it works is you have to get a bus to drop you off at the start and meet you at the end. The walk is supposed to take between 6-8 hours and we were dropped off at 7.45am. There is a slight detour you can make which involves climbing the summit of Mount Ngauruhoe. When we got dropped at the start we left with an open mind on wether we would climb this or not. At the start of the walk, the sunrise was only covering half of the mountain so most of the track was still dull and looking around you couldn't help but feel you were in a scene from Lord of the Rings.
The walk starts with a steady incline from Mangatepopo Valley to Soda Springs. It is generally believed that the Manatepopo Valley was carved out during the last ice age by glaciers and has since been paritially filled by lava flows from Ngauruhoe. We could notice the different colours of lava flow as we walked through the valley. The surface colour of the newest lava is darker and absorbs a lot of the suns heat, making it a harsh environment for plants to grow. The older lava has a lot more plants that take advantage of the slow build up of precious soil. By the time we reached Soda Springs we had already climbed around 300m and were now at an altitude of just under 1400 meters. That was the easy part as from Soda Springs to South Crater there was an extreme incline of 340 meters that was only over the distance of about 1km. This section is known as the Devils Staircase. Here we crossed over two lava flows from eruptions in 1870 and two pyroclastic flows from 1975. This was a killer but we had made extremly good time and as we were ahead of schedule and were now at the base of Mount Ngauruhoe we decided to go for the ultimate challenge - try to climb to the top of the volcano summit.
This mountain is 2287m tall and involves some very steep mountian climbing up the side of a volcano with no defined paths. We basically had to make our own way up choosing what we thought looked like the best route. We felt a bit out of place as everyone was geared up with proper hiking boots and hiking poles etc. Here we were with worn out gripless trainers and fingernails to claw ourselves up the rocks.
It took what like seemed forever to reach the top, especially the last few 100m as there were no fixed rocks to hoist yourself up that way, and the surface was loose rubble on an intensely steeper incline. With every step forward there were four taken backwards. Eventually I reached the top eager to see in side the volcano. I think I was expecting bubbling, fiery, lava brewing inside, instead it was basically a mountian with a hole in the middle. A few minutes later I heard a voice shout up "Is that the top" as Colin was shockingly about to rest 2 seconds from what he hadn't realised was the top! We sat up here admiring the view rewarding ourselves with a piece and crisps for breakfast. After all, we had been up since 6ish and done a 6km hike followed by a 2287m mountain climb!
There wasn't too much time to relax though as we were told that we had to be off the top of the mountian by 11.30am if we intended catching our bus at 4pm. This was quite fun but a bit crazy, as you basically just slide down the mountain, although I didn't think so at the start as I hadn't thought about how to get down, as the only thoughts I had were how long to the top. Colin and another guy just started running, realising too late how do you stop. Me and another girl were more cautious and waited to see if this approach would work. They both managed to stop without falling to their death so we decided to give it a shot. Before long we were half way down but our feet were bursting out our trainers as they had filled with stones. The best way to describe it is snow boarding down the mountain without the board and snow. We must have stopped 5 times to empty our shoes. One of the last times I thought I was stuck because there were too many stones stuck in my trainer that I couldn't get out that my trainer wouldn't fit back on and I wouldn't have been able to go down bare footed! We did fall a few times but not to our deaths, it only led to a few cuts and bruises and I even managed to get a stone shoved under my skin that was fun to pick out when we finally reached the bottom. It was a relief to empty my trainers and know they wouldn't fill up with stones again. I was shocked to find matching holes in my socks that my big toes must have poked through on our journey down the mountain. I swear there were no holes when I put them on that morning, thankfully it was Sunday so I was able to get away with it.
Upon reaching the bottom we had the sudden realisation that we still had around 14km to go and only 3 and 1/2 hours to get there. We stupidly thought we had tackled all the inclines but soon realised the steepest summit was yet to come! We were back at South Crater which is actually not a real crater. It is a basin that is believed to have been glacially carved and has since filled with sediment from the surrounding ridges. An explosion pit in the South East part of the crater formed around 14000 years ago. We were headed for Red Crater, which is the highest point on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing at 1886m high. As we got closer to the Red Crater we started to smell the delightful scent of egg. This came from the sulphur in the crater, evidence it is still active. This was not a good smell, imagine having climbed an unexpected incline finally reaching the top to be greeted with this amazing view of these beautifully coloured lakes and taking a deep breath of air to regain natural breathing and suddenly tasting egg! I thought I was going to be sick. After that I thought forget about this view lets get out of here.
These lakes are known as the Emerald Lakes. Minerals leaching from the adjoining thermal areas cause their brilliant colours which you can see from our pictures. The Maori name for these lakes is Ngarotopounanu which means greenstone lakes. From here the track descends steeply which we thought signalled the end of anymore inclines. We were wrong again as we then had to go straight back up to reach the Blue Lake. From here it was all down hill to the Ketetahi Hut. We were told that if we weren't here by 2.30pm then we were running late and as we were still a couple of kms away from the hut at 2.30pm we thought we were extremly late so therefore had to run a couple of kms to the hut. I think we annoyed a lot of people as it was on a very narrow path and we had to squeeze by them. I think that they thought we were showing off by running however most of them would have been on later buses than us. We got to the hut around 2.40pm and we thought we should just be able to make the bus if we kept up our fast pace, which we were both happy to do as my leg was starting to get sore and I thought if I was to slow down or stop my legs would seize up. Eventually what seemed like forever we reached the bus at 3.40pm, 20 minutes ahead of schedule and were surprised to find that more than 50% of the other people hadn't reached the end even though none of them were climbing up the mountain that we climbed. To our annoyance the driver waited until 4.25pm before deciding to leave them. Serves them right as we nearly killed oursleves to catch the bus!
We had been looking forward to this park since it had been recommended to us in Australia. It was very enjoyable at the begining with the amazing scenery and energy we had but towards the end we were both knackered and wanted it to finish already. We then had an hour drive to our next destination of Lake Taupo.
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