Walking On Volcanoes

Having missed out on doing the Tongariro Crossing on my way down the north island I decided to jump off the bus in Taupo again on the way back up to Auckland. There were a couple of people who'd been on the bus with me for a while so I had people to eat and drink with which was nice as I thought I might be on my own. None of them were mad ebough to do the walk though! The weather was good and I managed to signed up on a shuttle bus to get to the start of the trek. The only downside was that it left at 5.40am as there was supposed to be rain in the afternoon and it can take 7 or 8 hours to do the trek.
I just about managed to get up and loaded up with food for the trek and some waterproofs just in case. It was light when I started the walk at 7.30am and the sun was just rising over the volcanoes. There are 3 volcanoes in the Tongariro World Heritage Nnational Park - Mt Tongariro, Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Ruapehu and the crossing takes you past the first two. Mt Ngauruhoe was used as Mt Doom in the Lord Of The Rings films, so is pretty imposing.
The trek starts out reasonably flat and then you hit the Devil's Staircase. This is a steep climb up about 400m and is the hardest part of the trip. I was walking with 2 girls, but lost them on this part of the trek as they didn't cope with the climb that well. That gets you to the base of Mt Ngauruhoe summit, but it takes another 2 hours to get there and back and steam was venting from near the top so I decided not to go there.
Then you walk across a volcano crater which is a bit mad and slightly worrying. After another fairly steep climb you get to the Red Crater Ridge where there is a really good view of Red Crater which has some interesting rock formations from all the activity. It was a bit windy at the top, but not as bad as sometimes when people have to crawl to not get blown off! From there is a good view of the emerald lakes which are sulphur lakes. I stopped here for lunch and managed to slip over and land on my camera (see photo 3 - right in the middle - not a happy spot). Alas the camera broke completely and I've had to get a new one. I also got a really impressive bruise on my hip. I was fairly pissed off when I realised I'd broken the camera and set off turbo'ing down the other side and actually got to the other end in another 2.5 hours when it can take 4. At one point I ended up walking through clouds but it was mainly sunny which helped and in all it took me 5.5 hours which I reckon is a pretty decent time.
It's a pretty mad walk to do as Mt Ruapehu last erupted in 1996, Mt Ngauruhoe erupted in 1954 and Mt Tongaririo is still classified as active as well. Apparently the crater lake by Mt Ruapehu has been blocked by volcanic activity and is going to burst it's banks shortly and create a lahar (a mix of water and ash) which will probably take out the road and rail bridges nearby. They've got a warning system though so will have about 8 minutes to get everyone off the bridge...
Having done the walk I spent another day in Taupo by the lake (which is in fact the crater of a supervolcano), met up with Ricky our bus driver from the north island for a few beers and then caught the bus back to Auckland the next day.
I got into town around 7pm, got quickly changed and met up with Mike and Craig who I'd travelled a lot with and then jumped in a car with some friends of his and headed to Trusts Stadium where we had tickets for Snow Patrol. They were well worth the $80 (about 28 pounds) I paid for the ticket. They even played the Football Focus theme tune in the encore which was nice to remind me of home a bit! They only had 2 people serving at the bar though, so we queued for an hour for beer which was bit annoying.
Had to get up very early the next morning to fly to Sydney, luckily Craig was on the same flight so I had company at 6am when we got the bus to the airport. Was going to stay in Sydney for a bit, but have decided to head up the East Coast instead so am in Coffs Harbour at the moment and will head to Byron Bay soon.