Timing

Taranaki falls are best after rain.

Access

The track starts from the end of Ngauruhoe Terrace behind Chateau Tongariro. Walk the 250 metres to the road end, where the start of the loop is signposted. The walk works best by continuing straight ahead first, as you get the mountain view in full sight rather than behind you.

Track

The metalled track has occasional ruts - impossible to avoid given the prodigious quantities of rain that can fall. But in general this track is in good nick.

It’s an undulating start through the sub alpine scrub, with hardy natives and introduced heather studding the trackside. Ngauruhoe is ahead and the turrets from the Iwikau eruption provide foreground to Ruapehu. The track weaves between streams, crossed by bridges and reaches the edge of an 15,000 year old lava flow.

At the junction with the track to Tama Lakes, follow the signpost left down the steps. Taranaki Falls come to view and the curtains of spray mystify the rock studded pool below. Benches and viewpoints guarantee a sexy photo in the punchbowl.

There’s a bridge over a gorgeous secondary fall, where the gin clear waters tumble into a smoothed wedge in the bedrock.

From here the track is mostly in the forest alongside the Wairere Stream, passing the junction with the Mangatepopo Track. It exits after a short climb out of the watershed and bypasses the village oxidation ponds back to Ngauruhoe Road, just below the track start.

Geology

Ruapehu, meaning ‘noise pit’ has been active periodically since its birth around 300,000 years ago. The stratovolcano is a composite cone, a lasagne of andesite lava and ash debris. Magama chambers are believed to be between 1 and 5 km below the surface. Eruptions around 11,000 years ago left a laval field, through which this walk passes. Taranaki Falls tumble over a bluff of resistant andesitic rock.

Mount Ruapehu (2797 m) is the highest mountain in the North Island and is the only place where glaciers still cling. With Tongariro and Ngaruhoe, they represent the main focus of volcanic activity in the country and have been erupting for around 250,000 years. This area is known as the Taupo Volcanic Zone and has been spewing forth material from the earths bowels for over 2 million years.

During Ruapehu’s construction phase it has interbedded andesite lava and ejectile fragments such as ash and tephra. The construction method sometimes causes instability and as segments collapse, large debris avalanches and lahars are spread over the surrounding area in a ring plain.

Breccia and andesite lava flows over the last 130,000 years have built the apron around the cone, spreading over 12 cubic kilometres of deposits. This raw material provides the basis for the region’s soils.

From 60-15,000 years ago, several other vents added other ingredients to the mix, including dacite and olivine basalt. From 30,000 years ago more basaltic andesite lava flows, including those named the Rangataua, were accompanied by pumice, which choked the streams and spread widely.

Around 10,000 years ago a major structural collapse sent debris avalanche through the Whakapapa catchment and the resulting deposit has hummocky mounds on its top surface. These can now be discovered on the Mounds Walk.

The most significant events in more recent times happened around 4,500-3,500 years ago, when large tracts of beech forest in the Rangipo Desert were obliterated with 34 million cubic metres of hydrothermally heated rock turning the wood to ash in an instant.

More recent eruptions have been recorded in 1861, 1895 and 1953. A lahar spilled down the southern flank and washed away the railway bridge just before the Wellington - Auckland passenger train was due. 151 people died. A lahar gauge is now installed.

Images of the 1995 ash eruptions are now commonplace in New Zealand tourist literature. Geonet keep watch and all accommodations in the area have emergency evacuation plans.