I’m thinking about blogging a little more consistently here on the site, but this girl is just so busy climbing mountains and learning about New Zealand’s native species that it’s hard to find the time. Each blog entry is a weta or kakapo that I could be out meeting.

This weekend we circled Mt. Ngauruhoe…Mt. Doom, my LOTR friends. It’s spectacular. And alarming. At our lunch stop on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, I noticed that Ngauruhoe has little zig-zaggy trails up the side of it, hiking trails for anyone as crazy as a hobbit with the One Ring to destroy. And then I saw little white specks moving along the ziggity bits. I was on the trail with people that crazy.

But I myself wasn’t that crazy. My group was headed up Ngauruhoe’s neighbour Mt. Tongariro:

This looks much saner. While I contemplated that thought and hiked up to the base across this lovely dried up lake bed, a rescue helicopter landed not once, and not twice, but three different times to take injured people off the trail, temporarily closed during the rescue(s). So we waited for it to fly away…and then up we went. Completely sane…