New Zealand Part IV - Tongariro Alpine Crossing or Mordor

When the alarm sounded at 5:00 am we were slow moving. I was still feeling nervous, and it was so early. I'm not sure what did it, but one moment we were slugging around and then all of a sudden we were going to do this--we were going to hike the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.

At 5:30 am we went running out of our hotel room to meet the guy who would drive us to our bus. We got there just in the nick of time. John was checking out, and I was hauling suitcases to our rental car. When our driver saw me with our suitcases he had a moment of panic. He asked me what the heck I was doing with all of that luggage! I laughed and told him I was dumping it in our car. He thought we were going to try to take it with us on the hike! He also told me he had just about left us behind thinking we weren't going to make it. But, make it we did, and soon we were on a bus full of hikers heading toward New Zealand's best one day hike.

The bus ride was about an hour long. While riding the bus we were given a sheet of paper to write down our names and phone numbers so they could send out search and rescue if we didn't return--seriously. They also passed out a handy information sheet that told us all about the hike and where we needed to be at what time to actually make it to the end of the track on time. I knew John definitely wanted to hike Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom), so I made a mental note of what time he needed to start and what time he needed to be back. At that point I wasn't sure if I'd take the Mt. Doom side hike, but was leaning toward waiting for John while he hiked it. After reading the description of the side hike, I was quickly deciding that it might be a bit too much for my dizziness causing fear of heights--"DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS IF YOU SUFFER FROM VERTIGO."

When we arrived we stepped out into the chilly dawn, and so began our journey through Mordor.

Mt. Doom looming in the distance 

Soda Springs--At this point we were about an hour into the hike and getting ready to climb the Devil's Staircase, which would lead us to the summit sidetrack of Mt. Doom.

The Devil's Staircase was aptly named. It was a hard hike. A really hard hike. We climbed it as fast as possible so we could reach Mt. Doom's trail (if you could even call it a trail) no later than 9:15. We made it, and with the "One Ring" in hand, John continued without me. The deciding factor for me was written on our information sheet, "This track is extremely dangerous and should only be attempted if you found the Devil's Staircase easy." I did not find the Devil's Staircase easy and knew I still had another summit to reach and a long hike ahead. I was perfectly happy waiting for John.

This is where our adventure diverges into two separate stories for several hours. When John started his ascent, I watched him for a bit as he hiked with a small group of people. After a few minutes of watching, I noticed an area a little farther up the trail that looked like a plateau where quite a few hikers seemed to be resting. I thought it might be a more comfortable place to wait and figured I could head back down to where John had started his hike when it got closer to the time I expected him to return. As soon as I reached the plateau, I realized John had made a giant mistake. He had started his hike up Mt. Doom too early. The official Mt. Doom trail was right in front of me, and it looked much easier than the path John had chosen. Turns out it was a much easier path.

While I waited I took some pictures and had a snack. I also noticed that everyone was coming back from Mt. Doom on the official path. I figured that, surely John would choose the easier path down and decided to stay put.

After an hour or so, fog started rolling in. Soon I was engulfed in fog, and so was Mt. Doom. I couldn't see a thing. I could only hear hikers calling out "rock!" to warn other hikers below of the huge volcanic rocks that were becoming dislodged and tumbling down Mt. Doom. Our bus guide had told us that if there was fog covering the mountain, don't hike it. It was really easy to become disoriented in the fog which made an already dangerous hike even more dangerous. Around 11:45 I was getting a little worried. That was the absolute latest you could leave the top of Mt. Doom and still make it back to finish the hike in time to be picked up. I was really hoping John was on his way down.

12:15 (the deadline for returning from Mt. Doom) came and went, and John still wasn't back. I started thinking that maybe he had decided to come down the hard way because he was assuming I had stayed where he left me. I didn't know what to do. It was so foggy. I was picturing us being lost on the mountain searching for each other when all of a sudden off in the way, way distance, I thought I heard someone calling, "Christa!". I wasn't sure if it was real or my imagination but decided to follow the sound. I heard it again, "Christa!", and kept going. I heard my name being called one more time and realized that it wasn't my imagination, so I called back, "John!". Once he heard me, we called back and forth, "John!", "Christa!", until at last I saw him literally stumbling down the mountain. He had come down the hard way, and he wasn't in good shape. What was supposed to have been a two and a half hour hike had turned into a three and a half hour hike. We were late, and John was so exhausted he could hardly stand. One of the first things he said to me was, "I really regret doing that." He also felt bad because he had been gone far too long, and now we weren't sure if we could finish our hike in time to meet the last bus.

When I first realized John wasn't going to make it back in time, I began to resign myself to the possibility that we were going to have to turn around and not finish our hike. When I saw what kind of shape he was in, I decided I was going to leave it up to him whether or not we continued. If we continued, we were going to have to hike fast, we had one more hard ascent, and I wasn't sure he was up for any of it.

After John rested for a few minutes, we decided to hike to the base of the Red Crater. That was the point of no return. Once we gauged the difficulty of the hike up to the top of the Red Crater we would either hike the rest of the Alpine Crossing or turn around and call the bus.

After walking through an area that had a lahar (. . . a type of mudflow or debris flow composed of a slurry of pyroclastic material, rocky debris, and water. The material flows down from a volcano, typically along a river valley.) flowing through it the previous day, we reached the trail that would lead us to the top of the Red Crater. It looked scary and difficult. After I spewed a few choice words (you know what I'm talking about John), we decided to go for it. As we started climbing all I could think was that I needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other. It was steep. Really steep. So steep that at one point there was a metal chain we had to hold on to for dear life as we continued to haul (more like crawl) ourselves up. It was by far the scariest thing I have ever done, but I kept going. One foot in front of the other.

Meanwhile, John was struggling. He was so tired and running on empty. He had finished off all of his Gatorade, most of his water, and he hadn't had a bite to eat for fear that Montezuma would take his revenge on the trail. He was battered and bruised and cut from his hike up Mt. Doom.

Just before we summited the Red Crater we reached a flatish area where we were able to stop and rest. After a few minutes we continued hiking. We were now climbing a ridge with a sheer drop off on either side.

Finally we reached the top of the Red Crater. It was glorious. We could see right down into the singed beauty of this active volcano. We were exhausted, and yet we felt a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

We didn't stay long. We still had many miles to go, and we were now over an hour off schedule. The descent was steep and slippery, but much easier than the hike up.

Soon we arrived where our information sheet suggested we stop for some rest and a leisurely lunch. We kept going, hoping to make up some of our lost time.

Once we were on flat ground we rationed the rest of our water and started hiking as fast as we could go without collapsing. We encountered a few more steep climbs, but they weren't as long and treacherous as what we had experienced earlier.

This area looked a lot like Helm's Deep.

Mt. Doom is engulfed in fog behind the Red Crater. 

Volcanic activity on the Te Mari Crater.

It was about 1:30 pm when we reached this point. We were trying to make it to the Ketetahi Shelter no later than 2:30. We walked, we stopped to take a few pictures, and then we jogged to make up for lost time. We kept following this pattern until we finally reached the shelter around 3:00. According to our information sheet, we still had two more hours of hiking to go, so we sailed past the Ketetahi Shelter and continued our journey.

Eventually, we made our way into a forested area. We would descend a set of stairs only to find another set of stairs that we had to ascend. Our bad knees were so sore, but we kept going.

We entered an area that warned us of a lahar and basically said not to linger. The sign encouraged us to get out of the area as fast as possible. Below is a small portion of the lahar (caused by the storm from the previous day) that was flowing through the "Lahar Hazard Zone."

Around 4:00 pm we crossed paths with a woman coming from the opposite direction. We noticed she was wearing sandals. At that point we knew we must be close to finishing our journey because there was no way someone could walk the trail we were on for too long in sandals.

Sure enough the end was near. Suddenly (with fifteen minutes to spare) the forested trail opened up, and there we were in a parking lot full of buses. We had made up all of our lost time, and we had completed our trek across the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. What a day!

Note: Some of the filming of the Lord of the Rings movies did take place in Tongariro National Park. We really were hiking through Mordor, and John really did summit Mt. Doom. At the time, John truly did regret his hike up Mt. Doom, but once some of the exhaustion wore off and he viewed his pictures and video footage, he had no regrets. I think we both knew that would be the case.

I can honestly say that I have no regrets choosing to stay behind. As awesome as it would have been to reach the summit of Mt. Doom, I knew that I wouldn't have been able to finish the Alpine Crossing had I chosen to follow John. I am completely happy having hiked the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. As scary and exhausting as it was, I would absolutely do it again if I was ever given the opportunity, and so would John.