"Their faces (the hobbit's) were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them)."
J R Tolkien, The Lord of The Rings Trilogy
Someone, on the internet or in person, must have once made the mistake of telling us that it is important, when doing the Tongariro crossing, to be sure to take plenty of food. The Tongariro crossing is a beautiful and quite famous day hike, walking over the ridge between the mountains, with an optional side track to the summit of Tongariro itself, then back down round the crater of a more recently active volcano, all of which is done in the immense shadow of Mount Ngauruhoe, aka Mount Doom, for those of us who know the Lord of the Rings novels and film well. It takes around seven hours including time for photographs, rest breaks and lunch.
For this day walk, the four of us are bringing the following:
Three set of sandwiches each
One huge bag of Apricot Anzac biscuits
A quarter of a kilo of salted peanuts each
A quarter of a kilo of honey roasted peanuts each
A peanut slab each
An apple each
A bag of fruit and nuts each
A packet of caramel biscuits between us
At least. There was more but I can't remember it. And that was before we met up with Roxi, Cal and their walking guide friend, Ben (pseudonym), who added home made Anzac biscuits (far superior to the others), a large bar of dairy milk, a large packet of jelly babies and various other delicacies.
Suffice to say we will not be going hungry, and we have taken our instructions seriously...
Actually in the build up to this you might consider forgiving us for this rather overenthusiastic provisioning as somewhere along the line we have been given the idea that it is quite likely that we will be stuck up there for several days, clinging onto a rock ledge and possibly having to eat each other once we'd run out of peanuts...
In their eagerness to prevent hapless tourists from trying to do the climb in t shirt and shorts, or from going up under prepared for steep climbs, mountain top chill and wind speeds, and potential sudden weather changes in winter, the internet, campsites and guides have all combined to give us the impression that the climb is barely possible, absolutely death defying and only to be undertaken by professional climbers wearing seventeen layers including whale blubber, with a top medical team hovering anxiously above them in a helicopter and having done at least four laps of Everest to warm up first.
OK perhaps I have mildly exaggerated, but we were offered the rental of crampons by our campsite early on, which sent us all into subtlely varying panic attacks as we wondered if we were signing up for a hike or a full on, vertical rock scale.
So with some vague trepidation, we rouse ourselves at five, don our seventeen layers, (we couldn't get whale blubber but decided a bobble hat might suffice) and our extremely heavy backpacks, crammed with food for a week, have a short squealing fest as we are reunited with Roxi and Cal, introduce Michael and Helen and be introduced to Ben - and we catch a bus to the foot of our mountain
“Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril – to Mordor."
J R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
As a note, and to anyone reading who may be considering doing this hike - it's fine. It's not a walk into peril. And it isn't Mordor. The mountain used as Mordor in the films by Peter Jackson is Mount Ngauruhoe, which can be seen clearly from Tongariro, but is a more difficult climb. Possibly actually involving crampons. The Tongariro crossing is perfectly walkable without assistance by anyone who is reasonably fit. By which I mean you are not very very over weight or find walking very difficult. The only difficulty you will encounter is your own fearfulness, if, like me, you are a little squiffy about heights, or the cold at the top. And even that is not extreme as long as you are wearing a decent number of layers of clothing.
Thus, having ruined my reputation as a fearless mountain climber, I will begin.
The first part of the walk is on the flat, gazing upward at the magnificent shadows (remember that the sun is only just rising) of the mountains. It's the obvious point at which everyone strides about saying "well, this isn't too bad," just before they hit the next bit. I'll give you a clue just to set the scene a bit - the next bit is known as 'The Devil's Staircase'. (The devil, according to the various names for things all over the country, hangs out quite a lot in New Zealand).
Essentially the staircase is cut into the side of the mountain and made of wood logs (if my memory serves me right). Its the steepest climb and the one with out the same incredible vistas which distract you from the climb in other places, so probably, physically, the hardest of the upward parts. Actually the placing of this so early on in the climb is useful. We are all still fresh and excited, chattering away to each other and so personally, I find I don't notice the steepness of the climb until it's nearly over, when I take a breath from discussing racism, immigration and the poisoning effect of the Daily Mail on the British understanding of other nationalities and customs, and notice the view. As I look back, balanced and, by then, panting a little, on my step, I see the undulating view of green covered hills and turf below me, framed in the distance by other mountain peaks, growing upwards in hue from green to grey to white in the morning sun. If I look upward, I can see the perfectly volcanic, pyramid shape that is Mount Ngauruhoe, with it's grooved upwards stripes, making it appear all the taller and more imposing above us.
That, however, was nothing compared to what was to come. After about an hour and a half of climbing, we reach the top of the Devil's Staircase and walk out onto what I would describe as a hill top, except that, being in fact, a mountain top, or at least a sort of mountain clearing half way up, rather than grass we are walking on grey stones. That's not what takes my breath away though - nor the closer view of Ngauruhoe, now showing its deep, red markings as we move closer to it, nor the other mountains which now peak around us at varying heights. It is none of these things, though they are beautiful, but the few peaks and mountain hills which have collected to form a sort of bowl shape in which there lies a perfectly white, perfectly flat, perfectly dense layer of cloud. We are looking down at the clouds! What is more they are just so perfectly arranged, like a fluffy white carpet, revealing, from this vantage point, none of their actual misty flimsiness, but looking for all the world as though I could simply keep walking, straight out onto them, and bounce my way over to the mountains beyond.
I don't do that, though its very tempting. Instead I have a brief moment of near tearfulness at the beauty of it, and my surprise,at already having come higher than the clouds, and then turn to greet the others, our party having naturally parted as we each took our own moment to take in the view - and some lungfuls of air/jelly babies.
I could have stayed here all day, just gazing out at the clouds. They were so still under a very blue sky, and so silent. Many people do the Tongariro crossing daily, but at this stage there are not many others around and the scene is so peaceful, and so arresting it holds my footsteps, and makes it seem hard, rude somehow, to turn away and walk on.
By contrast, Mount Ngauruhoe's beauty is in its deep red hues, streaked at the top with snow that a reversed image of dripping blood. It's there in its imposing height, and its steep, seemingly almost vertical sides. The climb to the summit of Mount Ngauruhoe is a much harder feat, and more worthy of crampons. It seems to me that Mount Ngauruhoe knows this, and stares down majestically at our tiny, ant like figures, toiling their way up a much lesser path, daring us to take a 'proper' walk.
"One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just Orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep. The great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume."
J R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
I might perhaps point out that Mount Ngauruhoe is nowhere near this awful, and in fact very sedate and beautiful, and that I don't think the Devil really does hang out exclusively in the New Zealand countryside. In fact as far as I know he spends most of his time in Basingstoke Secondary Schools. Or possibly Yates's.
Even so, as we continue to climb, winding our way now, around craters and over narrowing, rock strewn paths beside steep, polished drops, punctuated by large boulders which seem to have only just paused in their plummet downwards, the ground and the inside of the craters and rock scapes we are skirting grow redder, and we grow hotter. Despite the fact that we are heading higher and into colder air, everybody has removed at least a couple of layers and has begun to make inroads into their water supplies. The colours around us are stunning now, streaked in hues of red, some dark enough to be a kind of bruised black, some nearer to pink. The boulders and rocks on the slopes are a darker colour, further from slate grey and closer to a sort of ceramic red brown. The ground is stoney and made up of scree, unevenly shaped and sized grey black stones, bits of flint and gravel which slip under our feet, revealing red earth in our footsteps.
At one point we manoeuvre ourselves past an outcrop of rock in the side of the mountain which the path is hugging, so that the path itself becomes cringingly narrow, and somebody has thoughtfully screwed a thick rope into the rock face for us to hold onto, or hang from if we slip.
"I held that rope so tightly I thought my hand would fall off" Roxi confides in me later. Me too. My hand is so tight on that rope I am nearly scraping the skin off.
"I read somewhere," says someone, "about a couple who were walking this and the wife just turned round one minute and her husband was gone! Down the mountainside! Just like that! Must have fainted or something."
I feel myself go pale. "Don't tell me stuff like that!" I say.
"Seriously," says M, extracting his hand from my death grip, "don't tell her things like that."
"Right!" says Ben through the giggling, "this is where we turn off the main path and do the side track to the Tongariro Summit."
"There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of even the fattest and most timid hobbit."
J.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
I am afraid of heights, remember? And also bicycles. And snorkelling. Come to think of it, travelling. And I am carrying three tons of snack food in my rucksack.
I am definitely the fattest and most timid Hobbit.
And so, as we begin this section of the walk, and I look up, fearfully at the pile of large boulders which makes up the summit, looking dangerously precarious and liable to topple, crushing us between them as we cascade down the mountainside in a heap of limbs and death screams. And I feel a little gulp, not in my throat but somewhere deep in my gut. The walk is still on scree, but the path is less obvious, and we fall largely silent as we concentrate on where to place our feet. We are winding our way carefully, partly on the narrow scree, partly clambering over or around boulders, and every now and then one of my feet slips on the scree and, though I don't fall, I freeze, heart pumping. I have no intention of having up or of going back, the thought hasn't even crossed my mind, it's simply that sometimes my legs, independently of my mind, suddenly refuse to move. I am dealing with these moments, being among very good friends, by talking myself out of it, aloud if necessary. It works because to speak I have to concentrate, on something other than my precarious position or the quivering nature of my knees. In the end though, it is Helen that resolves matters, when, close to the top, I pause for a little bit longer than previous.
"Are you OK?" someone says, and then, behind them I hear Helen say, sympathetically,
"Does she need a shove up the bum?"
She says it with such kindness and such perfect good judgement and I am so busy laughing and scuttling up the scree in a mock panic to escape the ensuing 'shove', that the mental block that causes the physical inertia is released, along with my shout of laughter, and doesn't actually make a reappearance. The whole thing has taken only a few seconds.
Not bad for a timid fat hobbit.
Later I talk with Ben, who is an avid mountain climber and guide. He tells me that he suffers from vertigo. In response to my incredulity he explains that he has found a way to combat the mingled vertigo, which is a physical response, and fear, which he also 'used to' be prey to.
"It's because you keep your eyes focused always just on the next bit of ground or rock in front of you," he says, "you think it will help but it actually makes it worse because then when you do glance up your mind is unable to adjust and it panics. What you should do is always keep your gaze up so that you take in the whole landscape in context."
I try this. It does work. An entire mountainscape, apart from being beautiful, is much more balanced than you might imagine. If you think about it, you are very rarely in a position, at least in a natural landscape, in which there is only you on a tiny platform, and then a steep drop. Even the highest most pointy mountains are not quite so pointy when you are actually on top of them, but pan out more gradually, and most mountains are nor isolated in the landscape, bit surrounded by others, some higher, some lower, and with passes in between. The whole horizon, breathed in altogether, is not nearly so terrifying.
Try it sometime. But take a trusted friend. The kind that can threaten to shove you in the rear.
We climb right to the top of the pile of large rocks, which is the summit of Mount Tongariro (after a slight diversion in which we accidentally play a game of Chinese Whispers and everyone gets very excited thinking we have reached the summit only for Ben to have to repeat himself rather copiously, that we are not in fact at the summit, it is simply a rest point, and that what he had said was that we were NOT at the summit.
It's very small, that word 'not', for something that makes such a significant difference...
We sit ourselves, smugly on a boulder each, looking out over the view from Mount Tongariro, don all our layers again (it's bitingly windy), and take out our sandwiches. And the biscuits. And some peanuts.
Well it's ten am after all.
Which everybody knows is lunchtime.
"You may tarry, or come back, or turn aside into other paths, as chance allows. The further you go, the less easy will it be to withdraw; yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts."
J R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Returning, rather fatly, from our perch, we begin the next, and by far both the most beautiful and the most dangerous part of the climb. I say dangerous, it feels more so than it is I think, and in fact the quote above speaks the truth in that I actually don't understand quite what it is I have just walked across until I get down the other side and look back, and realise just how thin is the ridge I have just walked across and down.
The easiest way to show you would be to use a photograph, purely in order that you believe me. We have walked, in the course of this trip, over some unbelievable landscapes, and you'd be forgiven for assuming I must have exaggerated. Unfortunately, having trawled through our extensive photograph collection, I don't actually have one! The ridge we are walking along is essentially a bridge between Mount Tongariro on one side and what is known as the red crater on the other. The reason I don't realise what I'm walking on is because of the sublime views I am distracted by. To my right the red crater plummets down from my thin path, made of scree which was once molten lava. It is a deep red, unmistakably coloured and reminding me of some huge, monstrous gaping mouth complete with tonsils. There is some giggling (another distraction from the terrain), among the boys, to the effect that the red crater reminds them, not of a mouth but of an unnamed part of the female anatomy. Cal goes back to have another look. Actually, I must admit, so do I. I don't see it though. At least not until later when I look at a photograph M took of it and omit a gasp worthy of any Victorian gentlewoman, covering up the legs of her tables because they are too suggestive and might excite the men. The photograph is on M's blog. Go back and look if you dare.
If you're the sort of person that goes back to look, that is. I, of course am above all that.
Moving swiftly on (Tolkien did not waffle off on tangents like this...no wait - the elf songs...), as I reach the highest point of the ridge I am treated to what must be one of the most surprising and beautiful sights in the world. In front of my the ridge snakes downwards, curving around three lakes, oval and glistening in the sunlight. One is emerald green, and I mean that literally, this is not a suggestion of colour, it is full and deep and unmistakable. Another is a lighter, more torquise shade, and then nestling behind it, another, bright blue. They are so perfectly delineated and so brightly coloured they look like gem stones set into the hillside. Or, given their smooth and unruffled surface, boiled sweets. I pause, as does every single one of the now numerous other walkers climbing the ridge, and simply stand and look. It is a view that does not only warrant it, but demands that pause. It is nearly impossible to glance up, unmoved, and carry on.
In my case I do have a slight ulterior motive, in that I have now seen the path of my descent. Which, though not steep, is slippery and narrow.
"Bury your feet in firmly in the scree," advises Ben, "it will act like sand then and you'll feel more secure."
I do. And I take a mixture of skids and steps downward. Ahead of me Helen is sitting, laughing on the ridge, having skidded over backwards. Bottoms, in this situation, are mankind's saviour. Its very difficult, when going downhill, to fall on anything else. The steep drops are to our left and right, but our bodies are weighted in just the right place so you never fall sideways. And that place, or at least in my case, is by far the most padded.
We stay at the shores of the gemstone lakes for a while, consuming more of our barely dented supplies, before continuing on. We are beginning our descent now, around the craters of dome of the more recently erupted volcano's (with a careful eye on the traffic light warning systems which will warn us if there is any sign of a repeat performance). The descent is long and very windy, through grassy landscape, entirely different to the rest of the terrain.
“Farewell!’ he said to Gandalf. ‘I go to find the Sun!’ Then swift as a runner over firm sand he shot away, and quickly overtaking the toiling men, with a wave of his hand he passed them, and sped into the distance, and vanished round the rocky turn.”
J R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Well...not exactly.
Although its beautiful, winding about in the green, misty wisps of cloud caressing our faces every so often, its a good two and a half hours worth of walking.
By half way down, everybody is limping to some degree or another, and the pace, despite the relative ease in comparison with the Devil's Staircase, or the relative sense of safety in comparison with the ridge, has slowed right down. The party gradually segregates, until we can just make out each other, as little toiling ants, winding back and forth above or below each other. Muscles begin to seize and protest even as we are walking, and I discover that there is, after ten years of 'wearing in', a point where my boot rubs.
"The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.”
J.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Arriving, finally at the bottom, we clamber stiffly onto the shuttle bus that will take us home. Roxi, Cal and Ben head homewards for hot pools and beds and the rest of us collapse in Michael and Helen's van and watch the rest of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, especially the bit we have just been walking on.
“Frodo drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said.”
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