One Year Away

Joseph

We’ve added photos to the New Zealand album.  Enjoy!

When we reached the north island we had
one main thing that we wanted to do; the Tongariro
Crossing.  Tbe
Crossing is a 1-day, 17 km walk that takes you through dramatic
volcanic landscape.  It has a stark beauty that was the reason it was
chosen as the filming site for the Mordor and Mount Doom scenes from
the Lord of the Rings movie. 

It so happened that a friend from work,
Gord, was planning on doing the Crossing on the same day.  We met up
the night before for some catching up before having a big pasta meal
that Penny prepared.  Full of carbs for the long walk the next day we
called it a night and went to bed early. 

At 6 AM the next morning our shuttle
took us to the departure point where we started our walk in the dark.
The landscape was barren and rugged with a few patches of hardy
grasses and tiny white
flowers being the only plants growing.  We
followed a sloping path up that was easy walking at first but
gradually became steeper.  After the steepest part of the climb we
came to a “saddle” where we had to decide whether to climb to the
summit of Mt Ngauruhoe (the real name for Mount Doom) at over 2200
meters in altitude or continue along the regular path.  Being the
adventurous group we were we headed off to the volcanic slopes and
started to climb.

As the path was unmarked, we followed
another group of hikers and headed up the loose, sandy, rocky slope.
With every step we took we would slip in the loose ground and making
upwards progress was difficult.  “There’s got to be a better path”
was our refrain for the first hour.  Then off to our left in the
distance we saw hikers taking a firmer and more secure path where
they were making much faster progress than we were.  We briefly
attempted to cross over to where they were but the ground between us
was too loose and dangerous.  We perched on some rocks to rest and
decide what to do.  After about 2 hours of hard climbing we could see
that we had less than a quarter of the way to go.  But the climb had
been very tough and the slope had increased in steepness to what Gord
and I estimated was about 40 degrees.   As we sat there, basketball
sized rocks came tumbling down the hill from the group ahead and
narrowly missed us.  We were beaten. We reluctantly agreed to give up
and head back down.  Somehow we had taken the wrong route to the
summit and would not climb Mount Doom that day.   

Our attempt had taken a total of 3
hours and left us drained for the remainder of the Tongariro Crossing
walk.  Back on the regular path, we had one more steep climb that
brought us to the steaming red crater.  The ground felt warm to the
touch and steam swirled about.  We descended from there to have lunch
on the shore of the sulfur-smelling Emerald Lakes.

The rest of the way was mainly
downhill.  Because  of all the time spent trying to climb Mount Doom,
we had to maintain a steady fast pace to make it back in time for our
shuttle pick-up at the end point of the hike.  This was easy because
a couple of us had to use the toilet and were in a rush anyways.  At
5 PM we dragged ourselves onto the shuttle, exhausted and looking
forward to a good meal and a beer in the hotel lounge.

Gord – thanks for a great hike and
making sure we set a fast pace.