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| Summit of Mount Ngauruhoe, 4000ft of elevation gain to the top of a volcano. |
If you think that looks like pain on my face, you can bet it is. The picture above shows me on the summit of Mount Ngauruhoe, also known as Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. It is an optional detour from the famous 12 mile (or 19.4 km) day hike. I figured that I came all the way to New Zealand, so there was no reason to avoid an experience. But after four thousand feet of elevation gain up a nearly vertical rock face, I had a lot of time to really think hard about that decision.
It took three hours to summit and about thirty minutes to run down the
cliff face in the soft sand. At first, there was no way that I was going to run
down a mountain that took me 3 hours to climb. But after a few more minutes of
scrambling down the side of the mountain with bloody palms and ripped pants, a
few of my hiking buddies took the plunge. They sprinted into the loose gravely
volcanic rock, leaving trails of dust behind them and speeding down the cliff
face like mountain goats. And so I went, running down the 3000 feet, from the
highest point, to the lowest point on the entire crossing.
Along the way, warning signs littered the track. “You are in an active
volcanic area. Move quickly through this portion of the Crossing.” Or “Lahar
risk. Enter at your own caution.” I didn’t even know what a “lahar” was until I
Googled it 5 minutes ago. These notices were constant throughout the 8 hours of
trail. Smoking vents were bubbling from most areas on the volcano, including
the peak of the craters at the summit of Mount Ngauruhoe.
Then, after 3.5 hours of summiting and descent, I still had 11 miles of
the Crossing to go. So if you’re wondering what my face looked like after the
full 12 miles, use your imagination.
But, when all is said and done, it was fantastically beautiful. It was
a field of volcanoes and volcanic rock, intermixed with “iron coral”, which
looked exactly like it sounds. There were coral beds of red rock highlighting particularly
magnanimous areas of the cliffs. The portion of the mountain that was below the
tree line was rich with plant life. Forests were so thick and overgrown that much
of the Crossing was on elevated platforms so that people could actually find
their way through.
But the real beauty of the Crossing was the fact that everyone who was
crossing knew the risks, the length, and the difficulty of the track and then chose
to do it anyway. It’s not called a “trail” or a “hike” or a “trek”. It’s called
a “Crossing”. This is because “crossing” indicates change, it indicates that a
person is moving towards significance. That is exactly what happened on this
Crossing. I witnessed people between the ages of 12 and 60 years old, from all
over the world, walking together towards a common goal. The Crossing was the
great equalizer. Everyone wanted everyone else to pull through and make it to
the other side. A trek can be done alone, but a crossing requires community.
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| Final ascent to Summit of Mount Doom. Initial descent was made by sitting on rain jackets and sledding down face. |
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| Final descent from Mount Doom. Made by running through the loose rock, rather than scrambling down the hard rock. |