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Published: November 21st 2006
well, this day goes down as one of the most interesting travel days i've ever had. at least dej and i upheld the canadian stereotype and friendly good samaritans...
we pulled in to tongariro national park just after 9am in the hopes of doing the tongariro crossing - the latter part of a 3 day backcountry trek between the two volcanoes there. kev was unable to do one of the hikes at hawaii's haleakala when where were there a few years ago. to make up for it, dej and i decided to do this 17km trek with him.
unfortunately, the shuttle buses to the trail only run from 7am to 9am. i think the girl at the ticket booth took pity on us becuase she managed to arrange a special 9:45 trip for us. now the trail is supposed to take 7 to hours to complete, and the buses returning from the trail only run at 3, 4 and 5:30pm. accounting for the 1/2hr drive up to the trail, that meant we only had a maximum of 7 hours to make the whole run. remember that little fact...
the weather report had called for light showers in the morning, with the cloud cover burning off before noon. well, it wasn't quite right. as we hiked up the trail, we entered the clouds where we were met by a light mist. now i can see why they filmed the mordor scenes here. the rocks are craggy, dark, and the clouds shroud everything in mist. well, as we got higher, the mist turned to light rain. there are two very steep parts of the trail. i think it's about 600m in altitude gain in less than 3km, and there are no switchbacks. after we climbed the first 400m, the rain got a lot heavier, and the wind speed picked up significantly. that's where we crossed the southern crater. the visibility was only about 10ft, so it was difficult at first to find the pole markers indicating where the trail was. kev was lagging a little behind us, but the wind speed was whipping the rain at 70kmph. dej and i decided to run across the crater in hopes that there would be a wind break somewhere ahead. poor kev just saw us dashing into the fog.
at the end of the southern crater is another 200m ascent. and it's tough in the wind and rain. but at the same time, it's amazing. on a clear day, it would be a 360degree panorama of the park. but to us, it was sheer drops on the crater rim into white nothingness. the clouds completely obscured everything but the area immediately around us. and it was on this ascent that we ran into a couple of woefully unprepared aussi girls and their friends.
they had thought it would be a nice little day hike in the warm sun -- not the cold and wet nightmare that it turned out to be. they were all wearing cotton clothes, had no rain gear, no gloves, and no hiking footwear. and most of them appeared quite distraught at finding themselves in that predicament. the steppest part of the track was slick and two of the girls were having trouble climbing up the rocks. dej and i hiked up next to them and offered them a hand up the rim. and that's where they stayed for about the next 3 hours. with the poor traction on their shoes, we lent them our arm for much of the trail. they appeared genuinely thankful when we finally got to the summit of the red crater. my new travel partner, stella, ended up breaking down and cryed out of relief on my shoulder. meanwhile, deja's new friend, karen, was freezing cold and he gave up his fleece layer to her.
once we climbed down in to the crater towards emerald lakes, the wind died down and the clouds parted momentarily. that when we found out that the only person in their part who had down the trek had turned back before the southern crater so that he could meet them at the end with a car. we took a moment to ensure the girls had food in their system and were warm enough. two more of their friends, christina and mike, found their way down to us. and that's when we had a chance to meet up with kev again.
the way down the crater, and the way out again are fairly steep, with a lot of skree. we had to travel slowly enough for the girls to keep their footing. figuring we had a lot of time to catch the bus we decided to stay on with them until we could reach an area where we could safely leave them. on the way to one of the shelters there were a number of snow covered slopes we had to traverse. it was almost painful trying to escort the girls across, having to take granny steps which they clung to us from behind. i felt bad for all the other backpackers on the trail who had to queue up behind us until we reached the other side.
once we were out of the crater region the weather cleared up and it turned in to a beautiful day. however, we were about and hour off schedule and kev became concerned we would miss our bus. stella assured us they would take us back to the visitor centre if we didn't make it in time, but we didn't want to leave the bus operators short on their headcount at the end of the day. once we made it to the shelter, we exchanged some contact info and some food before parting company. they still had two more laggers up the mountain side who they wanted to wait for, so dej, kev and i ran down the trail to try and make the 4pm bus. coincidentally, we ran in to their other friend (also named vincent) as he climbed up the trail from the carpark in search of them.
i always do poorly on the downhill. even with my kneebrace my legs were killing me, and my pace started to slow down the closer we got to the end. ultimately we made it down at 4:30 and had to wait for the 5:30 bus. we chatted it up with a couple of amusing brits and saw the girls come down at about 5pm.
tired and sore, we took the bus back to the visitor centre and were on the road to taupo by 6pm. now i should mention that we didn't have alot to eat throughout the day, and spent a lot of calories on the hike. after finding a little hotel (where kev offered to pay a little more to compensate us for the hike), we set off to find a restaurant at 8:30.
it's almost impossible to find a place to eat and 8:30. restaurants start shutting down, and bars close their kitchens. for such a touristy town, it's maddening to not have any place to eat. we eventually settled in at a little italian place, where i had the richest spaghetti carbonara i've ever eaten. but soo tasty.
and despite the coke and coffee i had over dinner, i had a thoroughly sound sleep.
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heath
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wowzers
that's an interesting story. were the girls at least smokin hot? we missed a mean cabin party. you should see JT's dance moves...sweet! we did a round of shooters for you.