Lakes and Falls

Tama Lakes and Taranaki Falls
Whakapapa Village, Tongariro National Park

Saturday 23 October 2021

Who: WTMC Families - 6 adults, 5 kids

Finally, FINALLY, Mark got to go all the way to Tama Lakes. He's made a string of attempts over the years, but always ended up having the trip canned due to bad weather / lack of interest from others in the group.

We planned the entire weekend around the hope of making it, selling this to the Families Group as a tramping weekend at the lodge rather than a skiing one (which was a good call - the very upper mountain was open, but that was it), and I forced Mark to not bring his skis, especially since the forecast was for one good day.

We took the upper track to Taranaki Falls, where we waited a while for two members of our party to catch up after they had had to race back to the lodge to get a forgotten jacket (this is not an area where you can shrug that mistake off with a "she'll be right"). Not long after that, both LJ and I started having issues and lost our enthusiasm to continue on to the lakes.

We kept going until we found a decent downhill leg, where we stopped for lunch. One of the other parents pulled out her phone and advised us we were under 1.5km (about 25 minutes) from the lower lake, which was enough to keep both a tired LJ, and her exhausted 4.5 year old going. I wasn't surprised that LJ was tired, he'd woken at about 5:15am and so he and I had gone for a 3km walk to Meads Wall for sunrise.

Lower Tama lake was brutally cold. The wind was extreme and completely freezing. Everyone put on additional layers for our stop. Four of the adults continued on to Upper Tama, while the other two of us wrangled all the kids into starting the walk back after a bit of a break. The Upper Tama parents came into sight behind us just beyond our lunch spot, and caught the front of our group about 15 minutes shy of Taranaki Falls.

We clambered down the steps to the waterfall and had another extended break, where the kids clambered around the back of the falls and the edge of the pool at the bottom, before chilling out with more food.

From here, we took ourselves along the lower track back to the village, which was a brilliant idea as it was largely in shade and next to a river for a large portion of the walk. All of a sudden it had gotten exceptionally hot. The last chunk of the walk back to the village in the sunshine was sweltering.

Back to the car and up to the lodge for afternoon tea and a rest.

Sunrise at the top of the Bruce Rd