When talking with Susan about what she was most interested in doing while she was in NZ, I showed her some pictures of various places J and/or I visited. She was particularly impressed with the pictures from The Crossing up in Tongariro National Park.
It is autumn here, and the mountain weather can be tricky, but we decided to try to go up and do some tramping, as they call it here. We were very lucky to end up with a beautiful, sunny day that started out cold but ended up a very comfortable temperature.
The wind speeds at the highest altitudes made it unsafe to do The Crossing, so we decided to do a different hike, which turned out well for me, as it was a new one that I hadn't yet done. It is called the Tama Lakes hike, and although we took it slow and turned back before reaching the lakes themselves, it offered amazing views of the mountains and a river the whole way, and provided us with a fabulous day of trampng.
This is (from left to right) Mount Tongariro, the Red Crater (looks small because it's set back behind Tongariro), and Mount Ngauruhoe.
The Crossing, (see my posts about it in January 2015) goes up beside Ngauruhoe, right by the Red Crater, and then along the ridge of Tongariro.
We were extremely lucky because there had been a huge snowstorm two days before we went tramping, and while almost all the snow had melted where we were walking, we got stunning views of the snow-covered mountains.
While it might not look like it, Mount Ruapehu is actually the biggest, tallest mountain of them all (hence the much more thick covering of snow).
Note: All of these mountains feature in the Māori legend, The Warrior Mountains, which you can read about in my August 2014 post by that name.
It was truly amazing to walk this path, because it took us right in between the mountains, so that at almost any point along the walk, if you look to one side you see the first picture, and if you look to the other side, you see the second picture. So impressive!
Short parts of the trail took us through native bush, which was lovely. It was interesting to perceive how intense the sun was; we would be getting too hot and taking off layers, and then the second we got in the shade of a tree, we'd need to put them all back on again.
Look at the high water level of this river! But I think it must not get that high anymore, because it would totally wash away the trail we went on.
The water was amazingly crystal clear!
Part way through our walk, we came across Taranaki Falls. I don't know why it's called that, as it is not in Taranaki (or even close), but it was very beautiful. Susan particularly loved it.
Happy Emma climbed down to the bottom of the falls, and just after Susan took this happy picture, I became a bit less happy and a bit more cold, as the icy spray got me far wetter than I would have predicted. But the sun dried me out quite promptly.
Notice the rainbow by the bottom!
This is an interesting optical illusion - several people I've shown this picture to have said that it looks like the river is flowing towards the bottom of the picture... but it's not.
I took this picture while standing by the top of Taranaki Falls, and at the very bottom you can see the ripples from where the falls end, and then it runs downhill towards the top of the picture. I knew this, of course, having walked next to the river and taken the picture, but now that people have said that, I really think it looks like the river is reversed!
This is the river at the top of the waterfall. I love the clear water with red and blue stones; it looks magical.
Love those mountains!
Susan was a fabulous tramping companion, and was a great sport even when she discovered that the pads in her orthodics were more worn down than she thought, which made her feet ache. What a trooper!
This bumble bee, along with her many friends, enjoyed accompanying us on our walk. She was the friendliest, though, settling in on my warm, black backpack, and then hanging out on my glove for a while. I decided to not focus on the fact that she was clearly trying to find a nice place to die, and enjoyed her company for a while before finding her a nice little spot in the sun to rest.
I climbed this teeny-tiny mountain in order to peer even closer at the mighty Ruapehu.
We ate at the Chateau for dinner the night before our hike, just like Patty, Kirsten and I did. This time, the weather was so clear that we got this amazing view of Ngauruhoe through the front archway.
No mountain post is complete without a picture of the stunning rolling hills that comprise the view on the drive up and down. These hills are J's very favourite thing about NZ, and they're pretty high on my list as well. Also, notice the charming smattering of sheep.
