Taupo and Tongariro Crossing

Sorry that I haven't posted anything recently but I decided to make it out to Taupo this weekend. It was a 6 hour bus ride with about 10 people in our rental van so space was tight but knowing everyone definitely made the ride enjoyable. We left last Thursday and found our bach later that night. This bach was our own rental house for the weekend and was right on the water of Lake Taupo. It was a great staging point for all the adventures we had planned for that weekend...

On Friday the groups split up. One group went skydiving while the others went hiking across the Tongariro Crossing. This time I decided to hike for the simple fact that I'd be paying for something better on Saturday which I'll go into later. This 19.4 kilometer hike (roughly 12 miles) is regarded as the most beautiful hike in New Zealand and it didn't fail to live up to the expectations. This trail also included a filming sight for The Lord of the Rings and infamous 'Mount Doom' of 'Mordor.' Naturally we had to climb to the summit of this mountain and see for ourselves just how incredible this was. Well to put it simply, it was the hardest two hour climb of my life...and this doesn't include the entire hike just the climb of Mount Doom. The entire path was full of loose volcanic rock so if you've ever heard the saying 'take two steps forward one step back' - ya that's basically what I did for an hour and fifteen minutes up a 60 degree slope. It was brutal but so worth it because once we made it to the top we were completely over the cloud line and could see everything! It was absolutely spectacular.

Now as you can imagine we had to get down this steep, loose rock slope and get on with the last of the 12 kilometers left on the hike. This was more of a run than a walk and I'm not kidding. As soon as I would get started with one step my foot would slide a good two feet down the hill and I couldn't do anything to stop it. This is where I started to run into problems because whereas the other two guys had relatively no problem going down this mountain, I suffered two of the worst/horrifying falls you might ever see. The first one I found one large rock that had some loose gravel on it and I simply kept sliding until I lost all control and was just waving my arms turning violently to try and grab onto something so I wouldn't start tumbling down the rest of the hill. That was a scary 10 seconds that left me with only a bruised foot. The next one was far worse. As I mentioned before we basically ran down this hill because it was kind of inevitable to do so. Unfortunately for me I started to gain speed far too quickly and before I knew it I couldn't stop even if I wanted to. My friends we're booking it down this hill and I absolutely flew past them. Soon I was heading not into this small gravel but larger rocks so I had to find some way of stopping - the only way possible was to take a forward dive, otherwise I would start rolling out of control. It really didn't hurt that bad at first but my friends came rushing over immediately fearing I had seriously hurt myself. It was truly miraculous that I walked out of there with only scrapes up my entire left leg and a bruised right foot. Been a while since I was that scared. Worst of all my friend lost his room and car keys on his way down the mountain so the hike had to be cut short and we had to head back to our other car that we brought (it ended up being a $500 fee for him to get just his car key refitted). Looking back on it the hike was amazing but I feel extremely fortunate to walk away with as little damage as I did. Mount Doom certainly lived up to its name!

This was before we hit the summit of Mount Doom

Alleluia! We had reached the top!

Some pride marks from my fall...