The central huge volcanos

Trip Start Jan 11, 2009
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Trip End Apr 12, 2009


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Flag of New Zealand  , North Island,
Sunday, February 8, 2009

We are now in the central volcanic region where they filmed Mt. Doom for Lord of the Rings.  It's very desolate here and reminds us of Hawaii, but with different vegetation.  We made a stop at the Whakapapa Village to ask about weather and hiking information. We got a suggestion to go up a ski gondola and do a hike around the rim of a volcano; this sounded great so we rushed off to what the thought was the correct ski area, but we had made a mistake and drove to the wrong one.  It was still a gorgeous drive, but took a 2.5 hour bite out of our day, which was too bad.  We are hoping to do the gondola option tomorrow as long as the weather holds up.
 
Instead of the rim hike we did a few viewpoints, waterfalls and one lovely walk at the base of a volcano.  It took us through shrubs, a forest, rocky streambed, waterfalls, and close to Mt. Doom.  We were really impressed by the hike and highly recommend it (Taranaki Falls Track) 1
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It's a little unnerving walking and sleeping near an active volcano... or is it being active near a sleeping volcano?  We've been reading all the emergency evacuation literature, just in case.  We heard three booms when hiking, and are still hoping it was just sonic booms from jets.  Neither of the large craters are showing any smoke, which is a good.  A2 felt a few minor tremors underfoot when hiking today; this may be normal in a volcanic area, else it's just jitters from thinking about massive volcanic explosions...

We watched a lovely sunset cast light on Mt. Doom while the full moon rose behind it.  It was quite the site!
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burkese
burkese on Feb 9, 2009 at 07:07PM

Just how active is the volcano?
So I was curious after reading your post and found the volcano update page for NZ (it's at http://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/alert-bulletins/alert-bulletin-sep-18-2008-11-00-am-ruapehu-volcano.html for anyone who's interested.) Mount Doom (Ruapehu) is one of the world's most active volcanoes, apparently, and is now at Alert Level 1 (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being run for your life and 0 being dormant). It is showing signs of unrest in a cycle typical for the mountain. The alert sounds blase, as though this is just normal Ruapehu behavior and nothing to get excited about, but then notes almost in passing 'Ruapehu remains an active volcano and future eruptions may occur without warning.' Looks like there's good monitoring in place, with the last huge eruption in 1953 and the last minor eruption in March 2007. The monitoring page notes the seismic activity, and it looks as though there are frequent small tremors, so you did, indeed, have a vibrating hike. Sounds very exciting, but a pretty safe bet.

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