In the shadow of Mount Doom

So, the obvious assumption from this title would be that I have walked into Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Literally, I suppose that is not true – I haven’t just become a fictional character in a novel written 60+ years ago. Nor have I just (unfortunately) become an extra in Peter Jackson’s dramatised version. However, in many ways it is true – billed as one of the greatest one-day walks in the world (a statement I would whole-heartedly endorse after the 5th March this year, and yes, I realise I’ve got a little behind with this blog – having 3 hours of internet in a month is not conducive to keeping it up-to-date I’m afraid…), the Tongariro Crossing walks straight through countryside used as sets in the filming of Tolkein’s trilogy, and alongside the mountain(s) used to represent Mount Doom in the movies.

Having had at best passable and at worst fairly iffy weather up to this point in the North Island, I was prepared to forgive it just about anything for the next couple of weeks as it dished up an absolutely perfect day for us to walk the Tongariro Crossing. Very cold to start with, although by mid-afternoon we had stripped off all but the final t-shirt and were (or would have been, had I had enough energy left to acknowledge it!) very grateful for the shade of the bush in the last 2-3 km of the walk. But all day saw horizon to horizon sunshine – even to the extent that we could see Mount Taranaki clearly on the horizon, about 150km away on the far side of the North Island, and the views from the walk were absolutely stunning.

The film version of Mount Doom is actually a compilation of shots of two mountains, Mount Ruapehu and Mount Ngauruhoe (pronounced Nara-hoi, my flatmate has just informed me – at least that answers something I haven’t had a clue about for the last month!). The Tongariro Crossing starts with a relatively flat walk towards Mount Ngauruhoe for the first 4km or so, which has great views of Mount Ruapehu, then climbs (very) steeply up the side of it, to a pass between it and Mount Tongariro on the other side. You then drop into the pass, a completely flat bowl that extends about a km in all directions, and then steeply up again the other end. By then you are just over 1/3 of the way through the distance, but have covered all the uphill – which is nice to know! A nice slide down the scree to the Emerald Lakes follows (in the words of our bus driver, perfectly swimmable in if you don’t mind paying the price of your outer layer of skin – apparently it is the sulphur that turns them that colour. I have come to the conclusion that the whole of the north island is a bubbling melting pot of lava and liable to melt or explode at any second – the south, by contrast, appears to be doing its best to imitate jelly, although I’ve been lucky enough not to feel any quakes except the biggest last February.) The Emerald Lakes are followed by the Blue Lake (even more swimmable – you can even sunbathe on the icebergs floating on top. There weren’t actually any icebergs, but we took his point and didn’t try swimming!), and then you cross over and start the real descent – suddenly down through tussocky grass (with the odd steaming sulphur vent) and bush rather than the decidedly lunar or Martian atmosphere that the climb up has.

After the Tongariro Crossing, the rest of the North Island was a bit of an anti-climax – we camped for a night near New Plymouth with some nice views (much closer up) of Mount Taranaki, but the only thing really worth mentioning by comparism was the Waitomo Caves, and even then, I had seen other stalactite formations in caves in Europe. Their biggest selling point was the glow-worm formations, which were amazing, but also completely impossible to capture on camera (I have about 25 totally black shots where I tried and failed).