Into the heart of Mordor

Today was an amazing day. Myself and several others on my tour did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing; a 19.4 kilometer (just over 12 miles) trek through the Tongariro National Park. This may not seem that ominous or noteworthy, until you realize that Tongariro National park is home to five mountains, including Mt. Ngauruhoe, otherwise known as Mt. Doom from the Lord of the Rings.

Our day started early, and we drove out to the park. We got any gear we needed, hiking boots, a rainproof coat (just in case), and so on; and drove to the starting area. We were dropped off there at around 8:45, and our seven hour epic began. Now, this is not a loop, it's a track through the park. There is no turning back, once you have started you must make the trek. We walked for close to an hour through a valley between two mountains, making the occasional assent, but nothing very eventful. The scenery was beautiful.

After about an hour we came to what is called "the Devil's Stairs," which are very aptly named I can assure you. This was about 45 minutes to an hour worth of hiking up a mountain pass between Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom), and Mt. Tongariro. This was not an easy leg of the trek. Let's just say, no one in our group has any need to do a stair-master workout tonight!

We reached a leg finally where the track leveled out and we could stop for an extended break. At this same spot, was the junction for the trail that lead to the summit of "Mt. Doom." From the beginning of the trek, "Mt. Doom" had been visible to us for the entire time (I bet I took 50 pictures of it). It really does look quite vexing, even in real life. We elected not to try for the summit, because at this point we still had around four hours to go, as pickup was at 4:30 sharp, and the trek to the summit was a 3 hour return from that point. There were, however, some guys in our group that ran the first part of the track (I can't even comprehend that) to have a chance to make the summit (three of them made it). Another reason for not taking the summit was that the summit was still around 1000 meters above where we were after climbing the Devil's staircase.

After the devil's staircase, the clouds rolled in. We went up another pass, climbing higher to a high plateau. The feeling was bizarre. Since we were in the clouds, we couldn't see very far, there was no vegetation at all, and the area was littered with all sorts of stones and rocks. It felt like we were on another planet! But it was flat and level, so we welcomed it after the rapid assent we had made.

We came then to another climbing section. After we had been on that for around 30 or 40 minutes, we stopped for lunch. Since we were still in the clouds and couldn't see, we thought that our assent was complete, and the rest was downhill. It even looked that way on our map... It wasn't. We ascended for another 30 minutes or so, passing red crater (usually a highlight, and big photo-op on the trek, but we couldn't see it because of the clouds.) and climbed a bit more to the Emerald lakes; which we could just make out through the clouds.

From this point, the trek was downhill. We passed between Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Te Maari, past a crater lake, called blue lake (that we couldn't see due to the clouds); and then continuing on. We eventually came down out of the clouds, stopping at a DOC (Dept. of conservation) hut to rest and refill water bottles, and then continuing on the rest of the way to our pickup point.

The scenery was absolutely stunning, and though the trek was among one of the most physically challenging things I have ever done, and the clouds shrouded much of the scenery of the upper parts of the track from view; I still wouldn't trade it for anything. It truly was an awesome experience.

There was a quote that ran through my head all day, through the times that the going was easy and the scenery was extraordinary; to the times that the going was not so easy, and wondered why I had even considered doing this in the first place. Sir. Edmund Hillary, a Kiwi (New Zealander), and the first man (along with his Tibetan guide) to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest coined the simple, yet profound phrase:

- “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”