Rangitoto

Last weekend we decided to hike to the peak of the youngest volcanic cap in Auckland named Rangitoto. Young in volcanic history means that it erupted about 600 years ago and is now dormant. We took a ferry from Auckland to Rangitoto as it is an island off the coast. Below is a view of the city from the water.



The summit hike took us about an hour to finish. The landscape was a vastly different than we had anticipated. I imagined that a volcanic cap would be a huge slabs of hardened black molten lava. We were quite surprised to see that most of the landscape was covered in small bolder sized chunks of rock that had been spewed from the volcano eruption.


Someone was nice enough to clear a path through the boulders on this stretch of trail, but that wasn't always so. The picture below shows me standing on the trail that looks like a bed of charcoal ready to be lit for a barbecue. Not the easiest thing to walk across; however, striking a manly pose helps to overcome treacherous situations like these. All you self proclaimed men, feel free to take notes.


We did actually make it to the summit. The view was breath taking. We sat, enjoyed some snacks, and gazed at the fantastic scenery.




We even managed to have fellow hiker snap a picture of us at the summit with yet again the Sky Tower in the faint background. We had conquered Rangitoto!


We soaked in one last minute of the view from the top, then decided to check out the Lava Caves Trail about a quarter mile below the summit. As the name of the trail suggests, it leads to caves that were carved out by lava flows after the eruption. We came fully prepared with flashlights powered by semi lifeless energizer bunnies to light the way. We put down our gear, crawled into these dark anonymous caves, and tried our best to not to soil our trousers. It was awesome.

I posed for a photo in front of this one. The caves were in my opinion the highlight of the hike. Traversing through the caves was a bit challenging and a bit scary, but that's the thing that makes life so interesting isn't it?
Anyway, after the caves, we hiked for another 2 hours on a coastal track that led us back to the ferry dock. The track was difficult with much of the trail covered with the charcoals of volcanic history. Sometimes it was amazing what we saw growing amongst the rubble.


We happen to see these little fellas basking in the sun near the end of our journey. They were pretty much the only living things on the island other than those who were hiking that day.

What can I say? It was again, another excellent hike.