Mount Tarawera

Why it matters

Shortly after midnight on 10 June 1886 the ground under the Rotorua lakes began to shake. The first explosions came at about half past one. By half past two all three of Tarawera's domes — Wahanga, Ruawāhia and Tarawera itself — were in eruption, and at about half past three the widening crack reached Lake Rotomahana, where superheated water met the rift and the eruption changed character entirely. By six in the morning it was over. It had lasted about five hours and it had opened a rift roughly seventeen kilometres long, running north-east to south-west through the mountain, on across the Rotomahana basin and into what is now the Waimangu valley.

How many people died is genuinely not known, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The figure reported at the time, and still quoted in a great many guides, is 153. Modern scholarship puts it lower: Te Ara, the national encyclopedia, says the official count was around 150 but that "it is more likely between 108 and 120 people were killed", and GNS Science says only "more than 100". Almost all of the dead were Māori. Some of the villages that were lost had no survivors to count, which is precisely why the number cannot be settled. Take 108 to 120 as the honest range, and 153 as the figure of record.

Te Tapahoro, Moura, Te Ariki, Totarariki and Waingongongo were destroyed outright. Moura and Te Ariki lost everyone. Te Wairoa, furthest from the rift, was buried rather than obliterated under nearly a metre of ash and mud, and had survivors — sixty-two of them sheltered inside the wharenui Hinemihi, and more in the house of the guide Sophia Hinerangi. About seventeen people died there. It was never rebuilt, and it is now the paid attraction called the Buried Village.

And the eruption destroyed the reason anyone came. Te Otukapuarangi and Te Tarata — the Pink and White Terraces — were the great sight of the Victorian Pacific and the engine of the whole local economy. Te Wairoa existed to send visitors to them. When they went, the Tūhourangi people who had guided them lost their land and their living in a single night, and were taken in by Ngāti Wāhiao at Whakarewarewa on the other side of Rotorua. That is why there is a living village there today, and why its people carry both names.

What it's like

Not a mountain so much as a wound that has been left open. The summit is a broad, dry, almost colourless plateau of scoria — rust and ochre and black, with almost nothing growing on it — and the rift is not a tidy crater but a raw trench torn straight through the three domes, with walls that fall away in loose slopes of red gravel. On a clear day you can see the whole necklace of Rotorua lakes below you, out to the Bay of Plenty in one direction and the central plateau volcanoes in the other.

The walking is straightforward rather than technical, on scoria that gives underfoot like coarse sand, and the optional part — a scree run down into the crater itself, which is very fast and entirely unlike walking — is the thing most people describe afterwards with their hands.

How to visit

On foot — Kaitiaki Adventures. A 4WD carries you out to the trailhead, roughly fifty minutes each way, and the walk itself is about two hours on the mountain. The half-day hike is NZ$209 and the full day NZ$274, with combinations bundling the Kaituna river or an evening at Te Puia running from NZ$299 to NZ$488. Minimum age seven, groups capped at twenty, moderate fitness, and a steep loose descent that people with back or heart trouble should think about. Departures are early, around a quarter past eight.

By air — Volcanic Air. Helicopters leave from Lakefront Drive in the middle of Rotorua and land on the summit for a guided walk of about a quarter of an hour; allow forty minutes for the whole thing, from NZ$675 a head. It will not fly for one person — the summit landing takes a minimum of two adult fares, which is worth knowing before a solo traveller builds a day around it. Longer combinations reach NZ$2,295 for a White Island flyover with a Tarawera landing, and note that those Whakaari trips are flyovers: the landing on them is here, not there.

Two things we could not settle, so you should know about both. First, Kaitiaki's departure point is published two ways: the booking channels give the main car park on Hemo Road, next to Te Puia, while Rotorua's own official tourism listing still shows 1135 Te Ngae Road, which is their rafting base on the other side of town. Go by your booking confirmation, not by either website. Second, no child price is published for the walk at all — the rate appears to be flat per person with a minimum age of seven — and Volcanic Air's child fare of about NZ$507 comes from a single reseller rather than the operator. Ask when you book, and budget for the adult rate.

And do not confuse the mountain with the Tarawera Trail. The Trail is free, public, on Department of Conservation land, and runs along the lakeshore from Te Wairoa to Hot Water Beach — five to six hours, graded advanced, with a water taxi back. It is a fine walk. It does not go up the mountain, and nothing does without a guide.

Making the most of it

Do the scree run if your knees will take it. It is the part of the day that turns a walk into something you will describe badly and often. It is also loose, steep and fast, and getting back out of the crater afterwards is the work.

Go on the clearest morning you are offered, and take the operator's word on weather. Both of these are exposed, weather-dependent trips and the view is most of what you are paying for. Volcanic Air says plainly that flight times and inclusions vary with weather, volcanic activity and loadings. A postponed day is a better day.

Wear boots and take a windproof layer whatever the forecast says at lake level. The summit is eleven hundred metres up, dry, shadeless and usually moving. Scoria eats soft shoes and fills low ones.

Put the Buried Village on the same day, and put it second. Standing in the rift and then walking through what the rift did to a village fourteen kilometres away is the right order, and it takes the day from a viewpoint to a story. It is on the road you will already be driving.

One thing not to expect: nothing has erupted here since 1886. This is a quiet volcano and a walk on it is a walk, not a brush with anything. If you want a system that is visibly working, the geothermal parks south of the city are where to spend the money.

Nearby

The Buried Village of Te Wairoa is fourteen kilometres from Rotorua on Tarawera Road, about twenty minutes, and it is a separate paid attraction included in no Tarawera tour. Check the days before you go, because they have changed and most guides have not caught up: it now opens Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm, last entry 3.45pm, closed Monday and Tuesday. Admission is NZ$25 for New Zealand residents and NZ$30 for international visitors, teenagers NZ$10, and children under twelve go free with a paying adult — a family rate of NZ$50 covers two adults and their under-twelves. Plenty of published advice still says daily, nine to five, with a single adult price around forty dollars.

Waimangu Volcanic Valley sits at the far end of the same rift and was created by the same five hours. It is the only geothermal system in the world whose birth can be dated to the day, and if the eruption is what brings you here, it is the other half of the story.

Further south, Craters of the Moon at Taupō is the cheap and instructive comparison — a geothermal field with a boardwalk through it, a ten-dollar ticket, and a birth date of 1958 rather than 1886.