The Kiwi Kronicles: Mount Doom Ain’t So Scary

Today our fellowship braved Mt Doom and undertook the Tongariro Crossing in Tongariro National Park. We had to get up bright and early to catch the shuttle which conveniently picked us up from our hostel. The heavy cloud cover and slight rain might have scared off some less brave souls, but we know by now that the weather always turns our way, and sure enough it turned perfect by the time we started hiking.

The first big site you see from the trail is Mt Ngauruhoe, an active volcano known by many for its role in the Lord of the Ring movies as Mt Doom. It had a cool ominous look in the morning light as the clouds burned off, and we got to see a number of different faces of the peak as we hiked around it, every angle offering a different picture-worthy profile.

After that there were a number of impressive, varied, and starkly beautiful land features with remarkably unremarkable names, such as South Crater, Red Crater, Emerald Lakes, and Blue Lake. The hike was steep and had some challenging footing (skiing down through a “snow” of small rocks and dirt was quite interesting) but it was well worth it for the scenery, the variety of otherworldly landscapes was amazing.