We’re in the hobbit, I mean habit of calling these Mountains Mount Doom, collectively. From our beloved Peter Jackson films, Lord of the rings.

Mt Ngauruhoe is sacred to the Maori, so filming the mountain was not permitted so they had to use scale models of Mt Ngauruhoe. However, some filming was carried out on the slopes of Mt Ruapehu.

So Mark and I made our way up Mt Ruapehu as other Hobbits had done before us.

In a chairlift of course. Well the chairlift was just to get us to the base camp.

Our feet were protected by high quality hiking boots as we have a lot less hair on our toes and needed some other form of protection. The mountain from afar was stunning, and didn’t look too difficult.

So I guess you want to know how the walk up went?
WE’D RATHER NOT TALK ABOUT IT.

It was a grueling 1 hour, non stop climb upon an extremely steep, rocky, dusty, slippery surface, with extremely thin air.
There is a time for modesty and that’s not now. We overtook everyone else on the trail and were the first to reach the summit.
Boy oh boy were we rewarded with a view. We felt such elation and achievement for powering our way up the mountain. Or as Mark likes to say, we DOMINATED that mountain. Here’s some pictures of us enjoying our reward.

The walk down was only slightly easier, but still used one of largest muscle groups as we were on edge at slipping on our ass every minute, our quads were engaged the whole way down and a few test skids and slips were completed successfully with no asses touching dirt. (They were of course all fully planned skids, performed by professionals.)

The last few minutes of the descent was exhilarating as we became little Rock hoppers, again speeding past a few other groups as we bounced from rock to rock, gravity was doing most of the work as we positioned our toes to land in the right places.

This was our first big walk in NZ and we’re very glad we prepared earlier with a workout regime to get us fit enough to handle the challenge.

• Lord of the Rings
• Mt Doom
• New Zealand
• Ruapehu