Day 343: Feats of Endurance

We got up around 4:30am to get read for an early morning shuttle from Taupo out to the start of the climb in Tongariro National Park. We shared the shuttle with two other people staying in Taupo, bringing our little group to 7. Tongariro is recently famous for being used for filming of Mordor and Mt. Doom in The Lord of the Rings movies, and it's something of a wasteland of dust and volcanic rock. The walk began pretty easily with winding paths through rocky fields with lots groundcovers and lichens. The mountains themselves began pretty obscured by cloud, but things cleared up quite a bit as we approached.


Once we got to the edge of the mountains things got steeper and quite a bit harder. The steepness wasn't really the problem, but in many places the ground was loose volcanic sand and gravel that slipped with every step, and through the hike we all slipped and fell down more than once. After the first climb up there's a long flat section that goes by the red crater, and a nice view down at the rocky plain on the other side of the mountains.


There was another steep climb up the next ridge before the path carried on down the other side to the emerald lakes. This steep descent wasn't too bad to go down, and normally going down is all you have to do since it's a one-way path. Unfortunately the end section of the crossing has been closed for some time do to dangerous volcanic activity, so we had to slowly climb back up the steep, shifting slope of sand.


Once climbing back up to the highest part of the walk we stopped for lunch, then retraced our path back over and out of the mountains. Once we got back to our starting point we got the shuttle back to Taupo and after returning to our hostel for showers we went down to the main area to get some dinner and drinks. As I mentioned before, this was the day of the Taupo Iron Man race, so we got a table along the course to watch and cheer people on. For those that don't know, Iron Man competitions are insane. It's like a triathalon, but they lengthen all the sections since apparently triathalons aren't hardcore enough already. The Iron Man consists of a 4km swim followed by a 180km bicycle ride. If you're not exhausted after all that, then you only have to run a full marathon of 42km afterwards to finish. I'm a little in awe of anybody that can finish one of these, even if I question their sanity a little for wanting to put themselves through it. Deserving special mention is a guy staying in our hostel that we had a bit of a chat with who was probably about 50, and only had one arm. I don't know what time he got, but we saw him well into the marathon run.