From Mount Doom to the Lonely Mountain

I’m back. The last 4 days were spent walking the Tongariro Northern Track, 50km and one of new Zealand’s Great Walks. Again I barely made it with my car. It took me nearly 2h from Turangi to Whakapapa village, which is only 50km, and I had to stop every mile on these 2% roads, going from 80km/h to 40. But thank god I could leave the crappy car behind on the parking lot for a couple of days. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is the most famous one day walk in the country, and that becomes really clear when seeing hordes of tourists going up on the extremely, even obsessively, well maintained, almost wheelchair accessible track for fatties, to see or climb Mount Doom, the Red Crater and the Emerald Lakes. After 9km I dropped my stuff at the first hut and hiked up to climb to the crater of Mount Ngauruhoe or better known as Mount Doom, or Amon Amarth for me. It took me only 1h10 from the intersection, but walking on scree all the time, and sliding down rather than going up is not a casual walk in the wark. Poor Sam and Frodo. I expected to see lava, but no, only some ice. I was thinking about throwingmy carkeys into the crater. But the heart of men is weak and now I will end up with a few arrows sticking out of my back like, and another poor creature gets of with the car. From the top you could see the old black lava streams going down into the valley, and Mount Taranaki in the distance. If you remember the shot at the end of the Hobbit, where they look to the Lonely Mountain, well that’s pretty much it. The land around is just completely flat and than this perfect volcanoe cone rising up, just like Mount Doom. Coming down the scree field was more skiing than anything else, and gathering piles of dust and stones in your shoes. Luckely I could take a shower under the Soda Springs, where the water has a sulphur smell due to all the volcanic stuff in the ground. But I didn’t mutate or so, although drinking from any river in the park is discouraged. I also forgot to tell that I saw the guy from whom I bought the car from for a second time. He told me back in Auckland his flight was the next day and he went back to Australia. And now he pops up everywhere, first on a farmersmarket in Rotorua and now on the alpine crossing. It isn’t really hard to miss this guy, he is at least 2m or so. He must really have been thinking how I managed to get so far with my rubbish car. Next day I had to hike up again the same way, but with all the gear. I went to fast, more or less at Tim speed, and arrived destroyed at the ridge where you could see the Red Crater and the 3 Emerald Lakes and the Blue Lake. Normally the crossing goes further but on the trail there is a small crater which is really active and is about to explode any time soon, so the day hikers have to return here. But for our walk we had to continue a little bit to the intersection, while crossing the flying rock zone where some sulphur steam was coming out of the rocks. I really start to love that smell. And then you enter what I would call the Gorgoroth valley, a barren wasteland with little or no life but some dry grasses and odd looking lava rock formations. This is the Rangipo desert. And more to the south the Black gate scene was filmed. I worried about having to do this walk on my own, but at the next hut I hooked up with Laura from Switzerland, who payed less taxes for 5 years because she was registered in another town than where she was working, Fabian from Germany, who didn’tspeak really much, and Fred from Estonia, who has been here for already 10 months working and whoofing, but he went the other direction. You’re never alone actually, and see the same people every evening at the next hut. I only didn’t bring enough food with me. It was tougher than expected and I never did a multiple daywalk before. So at some moments I was really starving and couldn’t eat that much because I had to save it for the next days. But luckily lady Fortuna awaited me at the last hut, a new fancy looking mountain resort Hilton and 3 times bigger as the other ones, and sent a group of ladies who offered me their leftovers like salmon, cookies, nuts, soup, and even the leftover of their dinner which looked much better than the Uncle Ben’sand pasta alfredo you see around here all the time. There was also an older Canadian couple from Invermere near the Bugaboos and they brought fresh vegetables and chicken with them and cooked a ***meal everyday. The last 15km had to be walked in pouring rain and galling winds. We were completely soaked to the bone, but at least the walk itself wasn’t too tiring. And as finishing touch the battery of the car went flat again but at the visitor centre it seemed they are prepared for everything and I could use a jump starter and continued for miles before stopping. As I told, this Mount Taranaki looked really interesting and would be my next destination. To get there I wanted to take the Old Forgotten Highway, one of the many thematic highways here, which is 150km long and without any possibility to get fuel or food. It is a real nomansland, only inhabited by a handful of sheep- and cowfarmers, and reminisce of the old good pioneering days when real adventurers wanted to colonize this part of the island. For me and especially for the car this would also be quite an adventure. But sometimes you have to take risks. I left at 4pm, which means I almost didn’t see anyone on the way, and I could drive a bit faster on this really endless road with millions of curves, hills and saddles and 15km of unsealed gravel road where driving more felt like rallying. And mister car only had to take two breaks. It was getting dark soon but I didn’t want to stop in the middle of nowhere with the chance the car wouldn’t start the next morning. So I made it straight to Stratford where a drunk German wanted to have a conversation with me while I was refilling the water. Strange town with strange people, so I continued to Egmont National Park and my car was close to giving up, but I found a nice spot next to the parking lot. This was a really long day but next morning I was ready to get to the summit of another volcano. And this was a nasty climb. Three hours of nearly vertical climbing on a boring 4wheel track, after that endless stairs, a scree field, completed with an old lava stream where there was not much of a track but only a next rock in front of you to climb over. We couldn’t see much because we were above the clouds all the time, but at least I could see the other volcano’s in the Tongariro park. The top was at 2518m and with this strong icy gales not a place to stay around for too long. And all of a sudden the two frenchies I met on the top of Mount Doom show up to. I reckon this won’t be the last time. And now I’m in New Plymouth, where the long awaited shower was waiting to clean the dirt of this dirtbagger. Tongariro Northern Track Mount Taranaki