The Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom) Summit - May 13, 2007

THE NGAURUHOE SUMMIT (Mount Doom) (2287m). Grade Very Challenging.
After already having completed the first two legs of our 3 day hike, we had the vast wastelands and mountain shrubbery behind us, and the Tongariro Crossing, and Mount Ngauruhoe in front of us. This leg of our journey is often described as the best one-day hike in New Zealand, and the Tongariro Crossing provides an opportunity to experience some of the most scenic and active volcanic areas of the park. The previous 2 days, we had only ran into a few other people, but considering this is such a popular day hike, we were prepared for some crowds today. Taking that into consideration, we camped outside the hut instead of in it, where we heard rowdy partying going on until late at night, which is very unusual for New Zealand huts in our experience.
In order to try to avoid the crowds, we started at around 5am by making breakfast and taking down camp. At 6 the sun was starting to rise as we left the hut. We made it about 3/4th of the way up to the Blue lake before the sun rose at 7:11 over lake Taupo. It was absolutely beautiful. We then hurried to the Blue lake to get a shot of the sun coming up over the peak. We were too late! But it was still only 7:30ish and we were the only ones there. We read Psalm 19 and thanked God for His amazing creation! Then we set off towards the Red Crater. It was pretty challenging getting to the top of the crossing, but when we finally did, it was so worth it. We turned around, and had a beautiful view of two emerald blue crater lakes,

the vast wastelands that the volcano had left, and a dark mountain range in the distance. We spent a couple of minutes enjoying it and taking pictures, and then headed over the top of the crossing. The whole way down the other side, we could see Mount Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings) looming up before us. We made up our minds that we'd climb it, considering we heard it could be done.
By the time we got to the base of the mountain, my climbing muscles were already pretty spent, and it took a lot of encouraging from Dave for me to climb up the volcanic rocks, sometime almost straight up. We finally made it to the top, and we were almost breath taken by the view. We saw Mount Ruapehu in the near distance, with 2 emerald blue lakes at its base. We turned around and were fully able to take in what the top of a volcano looks like. There was steam coming out of it, and ice was completely covering the side that we out of direct sunlight. There were a few other people that had undertaken the journey to the top as well, but in about 20 minutes, they had all left, leaving us to enjoy this spectacular beauty all to ourselves.
After walking the whole way around the peak, down the lip, and then up the inside of the lip to peer down inside the crater, we had our curiosity satisfied, and decided it was time to head back down the mountain. We walked to the side of the mountain where we would go down, and watched a wall of heavy clouds start to come in. We still had miles to go before we could set up camp for the night.. we had to hurry! We head heard of people rock skiing down steep slopes that are covered with loose gravel, so we scouted out the path down the mountain with the least amount of hard lava, and decided to give it a go. I took a few steps down the mountain, and as my feet started sliding down into the ash and rocks, I started taking bigger and bigger steps, until I was leaping down the almost vertical slope of the mountain, almost too fast to control my steps, or even stop myself. I started laughing so hard that I had to somehow skid myself to a stop, and when I turned around, I saw Dave flying down the mountain at full speed, with a look of untamed excitement on his face. He fell to a shaky stop next to me, and we both collapsed in laughter, unable to tone down the rush of adrenaline we were both getting a very large dose of. We gasped that this had to be one of the best days of our lives. I'll never forget that! Wow, we've had some good times together. We flew to the bottom of the mountain, making it down in about 15 minutes, where as it took us two hours to climb it!!
At the bottom, we found our bags, and started the long climb down Devil's Staircase. It was pretty demanding and we could barely see in front of us cause of the heavy clouds that we were in. At the bottom, we saw a sign for Soda Springs, took a detour, and by this time it was dark. We hadn't really planned where we were gong to set up camp for the night, as we had just decided on the spur of the moment to undertake this 4 day journey after successfully hitching a ride further than we'd thought we'd make it this month. So when we got to the the Car Park at the end of the trail, we started looking for a place to pitch our tent. By this time, it was freezing, we'd been tramping/climbing for 14 hours, and ended up throwing our tent up (well Dave put it up while I sat huddled out of the wind), on a little gravel clearing. He then made us a hot spaghetti dinner, and we cuddled up exhausted in each others arms, too exhausted to change out of our hiking cloths, or even brush our teeth! What a day, and what a great way to spend our first year of being married!! Thank you God for watching over us!