Mount Doom

"I can travel anywhere, except Cuba, and I will travel to New Zealand and walk the Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor and I will hike Mount Doom." ~Dwight K. Schrute (The Office)



Translated into real terms, the "Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor" is actually called the Tongariro Crossing and "Mount Doom" is Mount Ngauruhoe. Touted as the best single day hike in New Zealand, we went out of our way to squeeze the hike into our plans.

The day started in Kaikoura, a small pennisula town on the south island known. Our ferry didn't leave until 2PM so we visited a couple wineries on the way to Picton, the terminal. The first winery was very large and well maintained. The wine was pertty good, but nothing special. The second winery we visited was small and very charming. The hostess was outside gardening when we drove up. She was extrememly nice and the wine was great. Nicole found a wine that she really liked and we bought a bottle. It was a pleasant start to a fairly long travel day.


After crossing back over to the North island we drove straight from Wellington to National Park - about a four hour drive - and stayed at a hostel for the night. We planned on meeting Adam, Conner, and Tamara so we could hike the trail together. Nicole's knee was still not up to 100% so she opted out of the hike. She was awesome, though, and agreed to drop us off at the start and pick us up and the end of the hike. The trail is normally hiked by huge groups that use bus transportation, but we were able to totally avoid the crowds by starting and stopping at abnormal times. It also gave us the flexibility to hike up to Mount Doom.

Our original intention was only hike the Tongariro Crossing and leave it at that. But, Adam and I together tend to motivate each other to do, what most people consider stupid, things. On this occasion we were also motivated by the spirit of another friend of ours, Mike Rea. The last time the three of us were together we turned a 40 mile bicycle ride organized by Redhook Brewery into a 100 mile bycicle pub crawl. Anyways, we orginally walked by the mountain because it looked really hard and none of us had any real hiking boots on and it was an additional 3hours to add to an already 7-8 hour hike. So at the first pass we chose to hike on by. About 15 minutes later, however, we took a short break to eat some snacks and chat with a few of the other hikers. One in particular mentioned that he climbed to the top of Mount Doom. I think his words were something like,"I'm from Holland and we don't even have hills, but I had to hike Mount Doom. It wasn't too bad." That combined with the fact that he was wearing keds and a sweatshirt was about all the convincing we needed to hike back to the mountain and hike to the top.

I've done a lot of hiking and Adam has climbed both Mount Adams and Mount Kilimanjaro so I was confident that we would make it up to the top. What I didn't take into account was that the side of the mountain was enitrely loose sand and rock. It was so steep that we were on our hands and knees for the first half hour - they weren't joking around in the movie, it really is tough getting up that mountain! Eventually we figured out a way to walk on the difficult sand and volcanic stone. It took about another 45 minutes, but we finally made it to the top. The trip down was pretty smooth and the soft sand enabled us to sort of surf down the mountain. There was a portion at the top of the mountain covered in snow that we slid down as seen below (probably the most fun part of the hike).
From National Park, we drove to Waimara to visit John Willoughby - a Kiwi that we met at Jenny and T.C.'s wedding earlier this summer. He teaches about 15 students grades 3-6 in a two room school house right next to the ocean and lives next door in a house owned by the school. It is pretty amazing lifestyle and seems kind of like a different era. We were priveledged to feast on some New Zealand lamb. . . because the school lambs had just been butchered (John did the butchering). The school also has ewes and chickens, and we had fresh eggs for breakfast. In the morning we walked accross the paddock separating the school from the ocean, and took a walk on the beach. It is hard to describe what this place was like, but we definutely felt lucky to see it. We also had the pleasure of enjoying Monteith's Honey Spiced Summer Ale and Kathryn's Plum Sauce. The dinner was a traditional,"Meat and three veg" dinner and it was delicious.

Shown below is a very special car. According to John, the car, a yellow mini in case you can't tell, was the star of a movie that was, in New Zealand, as big as Star Wars. He picked the car up from the director of the movie and now drives it around town for fun. It's missing so many parts because the characters driving it in the movie had to sell them for gas money as they ran from the police. Don't know if you can find the movie in the states, but it might be worth it.