(written on January 6th from notes taken previously)
I was a bit nervous having parked where I did last night. Not sure if I would or could get in trouble for it, so it was pretty easy to get up this morning. 😅
Gratefully, I wasn’t disturbed, so either I was in an acceptable place, or no one who would have cared came by.
Even with the nervousness that made it easy to get up and get going, I was a still a little later than I wanted to be.
And the super rough nature of the road surface meant for slow going on the drive back out just as it had been on the drive in.
I thought there was a decent chance that I might see the French Canadian girls, as they were doing the Tongariro Crossing, which shares the same starting point as the hike I wanted to do and stays on the same track for several kilometers before splitting off.
The hike I wanted to do doesn’t really have a set track after it splits from the other one. 🙃
In truth, I was hoping to run into the girls (though I was also nervous for that possibility at the same time).
I actually thought I saw one of them in the shuttle bus that pulled onto the road to the car park right before I pulled on to the same road.
As I drove along the road, memories came back. It was this road that I had walked along and then hitchhiked on a few years ago when, after dropping off Chase and the Austrian girls, I drove our little wagon back to the place we had spent the night at.
The car park had a max stay time of four hours, and we were going to be on the mountain a lot longer than that, so I acted as the shuttle come expecting that I would easily be able to hit hike the many kilometers from where I parked our little wagon back to the car park.
Some of you probably remember the story. 🙃
I ended up walking and jogging a pretty large chunk of those kilometres because there were almost no cars that came along period I think the only one that did didn’t have room for me, intell eventually, department of conservation employee, or whoever it was, gave me a ride.
That day, I started our long hike off by already walking several kilometers. 🙃
Today, I went ahead and just parked in the four-hour parking, thinking that maybe I could get back in time, but also remembering from last time that they weren’t very strict on the 4-hour rule (the French people that gave me a ride back to our wagon last time having parked for much longer than four hours and letting me know that the parking peeps weren’t super strict).
Seemed funny to me anyway to have a four-hour rule when the hikes are nearly all more like six-hour hikes for those who are going up and back.
It should be more like a six-hour or eight-hour rule, in my opinion, at least.
Anyway, no hitchhiking needed this time. 🙏 I drove up to the parking area, saw the four-hour sign, and figured that maybe I could make my height in four hours. At least, that was going to be my attempt.
So after getting my bag packed up, sunscreen lathered on, headphones in, I headed out on the trail at a super brisk pace.
I had been listening to music with my headphones, but I found that I was coming up on people so frequently (it was a great day for hiking and super duper packed, so there were tons of people to pass), that I took my headphones out, put my phone playing a mix of Green Day’s greatest hits, courtesy of YouTube, and the sound of music coming up behind people alerted them to my presence, so they automatically moved to the side rather quickly as I went by.
Worked out great. 🙃
Much nicer than having to say excuse me or something like that a gazillion times.
It’s amazing to me how much mind over matter works in physical efforts like hiking to the top of mountains.
I’m super out of shape. I would bet that the majority of the people going on the hike are in better shape than I, but my brain seems to plug in its goal, and then however exhausted I might think I am, the goal somehow overpowers the exhaustion and provides the stamina that I almost certainly wouldn’t otherwise have.
Up, up, up I went, stopping occasionally to snap pictures just as I did on the drive in.
There was a young man with headphones on, maybe 12 or 14 years old who clearly wanted to keep up with me and even stay ahead of me. He would speed up to try and stay ahead of me when he saw that I was coming, and then when I passed him, he would eventually pass me again when I stopped to take pictures.
We played a little game of leap frog for a good little while before the track headed deeply uphill.
I took lots and lots of pictures, but stopping only super briefly, so as to not lose my momentum (and also to avoid the awkwardness of a repassing people I’d already passed 🙃).
The steep part was definitely harder, but somehow the drive to be back down in four hours gave me strength that I shouldn’t have had.
I pushed myself up, up, up, until finally, I got to a point where I felt like was a good spot to leave the main path and head on up the side of Mount Doom (officially known as Mt Ngauruhoe).
As I headed up the cone of the large stratovolcano, the wind howled, and it wasn’t long before it was just one massive rock slide, the only difference being the size of the rocks.
Each step I took was only really a half a step, as my seat would slide back down the mountain. Over and over and over again–step, slide, step, slide, step, slide.
Eventually, I got close to and set my sights on a solid rocky ridge that was maybe a hundred meters off to my left.
Much better scrambling up solid rock then wasting half of my energy sliding down.
That ridge had one drawback, however. The wind that was already strong was super strong there… and it wasn’t warm. 🙃
Fortunately, the ridge was tall enough that I could spend most of my time, for at least a good long ways, on the leeward side. 🙏
It was such a long hike, a lot longer than I thought. When I looked below me and saw the teeny tiny people off in the distance on the main trail and then looked above me at the few people who were doing the same hike as i, even tinier way off in the distance toward the top, it really put into perspective what I was actually doing.
But once on the ridge, I couldn’t really see anybody above me, and once past the ridge, I was close to the top.
That’s one of the nice things about climbing up cone volcanoes: the top you see from the bottom is the same top you see at the middle and the same top you see at the top. There’s not some extra peak that’s missing that you can’t see because another Hill or peak is in the way of the actual top.
No, on a cone volcano, you are exactly where you think you are. 🙏
Eventually, I made it to the cone’s saddle, the lowest point of the top.
From there, I could see little trails, one going off to the right and one to the left.
I was really tired, and behind on time, but I had spent so much effort getting where I was that I didn’t want to stop until I had made it to the very top–the tippy.
I could also see steam vents up to my left. I thought about going to them, but my goal is to get to the very top, and I was on a time crunch, so I skipped them and headed through the middle, the little valley below the higher ring-shaped peak above.
I walked up the side and then over to the tallest part of the top, parked my butt on the ground, cold wind blowing, and ate some food from my pack.
Looking around, it was a beautiful view–360° view with only the other portions of the ring-shaped peak blocking lower-altitude views.
Beautiful lakes, Mount Ruapehu (a significantly taller but much differently shaped volcano) just a tad to the south, Lake Taupo, etc, all in view.
You could even see Mt. Taranaki poking up through the clouds something like 150 km away.
Super cool.
I snapped a bunch of pictures before throwing caution to the wind, and instead of going down in order to try and minimize the chance of getting a parking fine, I decided to walk the rim of the volcano all the way around.
I figured that I had worked so hard to get up there, why just go right back down when I haven’t thoroughly explored the place? I might as well walk around and see everything from different views. 🙃
So I did. 😊
That involved both down climbing and up climbing, the latter being challenging because I was already so tired, but I’m glad I did.
Upclimbing to the far side of the cone’s peak taught me that there were actually two cones and two valleys, and I was circling just one of them!
Or maybe better said, there was a cone within the bigger cone? (looking down from the top, you would see a smaller circle within a larger circle)
Snapped a lot of pictures.
Walked around the nearside portion of the inner ring, a pretty sheer drop off to the ground below, but the wind howling in the direction of blowing me to safety. 🙃
When I finally came down after having gone around the rim, going back to where I had started from, having already spent so much time up there, I decided to go check out the little steam vent that I had passed probably an hour before.
Turns out someone had built some sort of geothermal device?
There was a hose that looked like it was taking hot water away, but I couldn’t see where to.
Cool to see hot water and steam coming out at the very top of the upper rim of a volcano.
I love nature. 😊
By the time I was ready to head down, I think I had already passed the 4-hour mark. 🙃
So I started booking it down… 🏃 …stopping only to give some people some pointers for the climb up. For example, one person was fighting the slide, so I pointed him toward the rocky ridge. I also showed him how to save a bunch of time by skiing down. 🙃 It was step enough, that as you went down, there were large sections where, when coming down at speed, you could slide a long ways, several feet, with each step. That made going down so fast. 🎉
Looking back up later, I saw that he took my suggestion and had gone over to the ridge, which likely saved him a massive amount of energy.
I made the same suggestions to another group that looked like they were about to head straight up the slide, and they also took my suggestion.
So that felt good.
I transferred my speed down the cone to my travel back along the path, cranking up the Green Day, singing to it, and jogging at a pretty good clip as I went down the mountain.
It was late enough in the day that I passed only a very few people on their way up, and I think I was the only person going down until I ran into just one person also going down somewhere around maybe the last couple kilometers of the hike?
Somewhere around halfway down, a super tall man from I forget where, somewhere in Europe, stopped me and started asking me questions about the hike.
It was perfect because I had just completed what he was hoping to do, and I was able to give him massive tips to be able to do it at speed since I had just done it and learned a lot in the experience, and he was in a bit of a time crunch.
Super nice guy. Great little chat.
I got back to my van somewhere around five and a half to six hours after leaving, just a handful of step shy of 20 km? of walking, I think. I don’t remember exactly, but it was a good little ways.
Being far beyond my 4-hour limit, I was quick packing up and leaving, but then found a nice little spot in a little turnout on the road that went back to the main road where I turned the car so I could stop and rest and eat with a beautiful view of the mountain.
I snapped some more pictures, chilled for a bit, texted back and forth with my brother Jared a bit, played a little Lord of the Rings prank, using real blood to make it look at least somewhat real 🙃, and then headed out to take some more walks down memory lane.
I drove over to the spot where the Austrians and we had part for I think two or three nights in a little hidden cove off the main road, snapping some pictures of the places and remembering a bit.
I stopped off at a gravel turnout and gate entrance where, at sunset three years ago, we had stopped and taken some fun silhouette pictures. I snapped some daylight pictures this time.
I stopped at a new place, right there nearby, Mahuia Rapids, snap some pictures, and wondered if maybe it were possible to Cliff jump from the bridge into the narrow gorge below.
Yes, I love jumping off high places into water. 🙃
After that, I spent a good little while chatting on the phone with my sister Heather as I drove around looking for a place to fill up my water bottles. My little CamperMate app said that there were places to fill up near the Tongariro visitors center, etc, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find them.
Ended up driving all the way to Whakapapa Ski Resort, the furthest point I could drive up Mount Ruapehu, chatting with my sister all the while.
Snapped some pictures, bid my sister farewell, and eventually headed back down the mountain to reprise my experience at Gollum’s Pool–making the walk down to the falls and taking a swim in the frigid, snow-melt waters below the waterfall.
I think the cold water might have been good for my worn out body. 🙃
I walked barefoot back to my van, got out of my wet clothes and into some dry ones, and then finally remembered that the place where we had filled our water last time, the same place where we pranked Chase with his Fiji water passion (filling one of his Fiji water bottles with local water without him knowing to see if he noticed a difference [he didn’t 🙃]), was the Kiwi Camp place nearby!
So I headed over there, filled up all my water bottles, drove over to the Tupapakurua Falls car park, thinking about doing the hike, but definitely hoping to spend the night there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t permitted to spend the night there, so I went back to the Kiwi Camp, veged out for a fair bit, and then crashed for the night.
Wow. What a day!
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 