Lake Rotomahana

On 10th June 1886, Mount Tarawera erupted with extreme violence for a few hours, burying several settlements in hot ash and mud with the loss of around 120 lives. The world famous Pink and White silica terraces had disappeared and a rift several kilometres long and a kilometre wide had opened up in a reshaped and devasted landscape.
Lake Rotomahana, on whose shores the famous terraces had been located, had become an impassable desert of steaming mud that was part of the long, deep volcanic rift. The former two small lakes had disappeared and were slowly replaced by the much larger and deeper forested lake which we see today.
The fate of the Pink and White Terraces, regarded as the 'eighth wonder of the natural world', had been a mystery for 125 years until they were investigated as part of a wider research effort to understand the hydrothermal system under the lake in 2011 and 2012. This included side-scan sonar mapping using autonomous underwater vehicles amongst a number of other methods such as high resolution multibeam mapping used to map the lake floor in detail. After overlaying a map reconstructing old Lake Rotomahana using pre-1886 photographs on top of the new bathymetric map of the lake, and combining with the side-scan sonar images and some photos taken of the lake floor, it was ascertained that some remains of the Pink Terraces might be still in existence under the water.
There was less evidence that any remnants of the White Terraces might have survived the eruption.
These remarkable discoveries were the first new information about the fate of the terraces following the catastrophe of 1886, and generated new questions about exactly which parts of the terraces remain to be found in more detail.

On the boat tour you will be shown some of the significant features of the lake and the shoreline, including the star crater, geysers, fumeroles and other areas of interest.