Tongariro Crossing

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(above is a panorama photo with me in it, on the right, taken by Kevin Hutchens)

Tongariro National Park is an amazing volcanic landscape in summer and a ski destination in winter. It has three major peaks, Tongariro (1967m), Ngauruhoe (2287m) and Ruapehu (2797). The area is featured as the land of "Mordor" in the Lord Of The Rings Movies where the Ngauruhoe peak stars as "Mount Doom". There are some incredible walks around this area, most notably the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a 19km track through volcanic craters with sidetracks to the peaks of Mount Doom (as everyone calls it these days) and Tongariro (an extra 3km).

I was staying in a city north of the park, Taupo, where I met up with an American guy, Kevin, whom I met once earlier in Australia but hadn't seen since because we had different itineraries. In New Zealand, it looks like we can meet up at several places, because we have similar itineraries. Me, Kevin, and another guy we met at our hostel in Taupo, Matt, would go together to do the track. Matt would be going ahead quickly, because he was planning to climb Mount Doom, an extra 3 hours, while we were "only" doing the extra Tongariro Peak side track which was an extra 1,5 hours.

A bus picked us up from our hostel at 5.30 in the morning and we started our hike at 7.30. The weather looked good, although there were some low hanging clouds. The first hour is a flat walk through rugged terrain towards "Mount Doom". Then it's a steep climb onto a ridge where the sidetrack to Mount Doom starts. This is only for people in either really good shape or who are experienced climbers. Me and Kevin just awed at the volcano and then moved on through a flat patch up the edge of a crater (The Red Crater). From there we took a sidetrack and it was about 45 minutes to the Tongariro Summit and another 45 back. From there, we had INCREDIBLE views of the mountains and the area. We were way above the clouds and we also saw a mountain in the far distance. Later, I found out that this mountain was Mount Taranaki, a volcano about 130 kilometres from where we were!!! I was planning to go there the next day.

We went back to the Red Crater and descended to a group of 3 beautifully coloured lakes, the Emerald lakes. It was another flat part to the next lake, the bigger Blue lake. From the blue lake, we went to the other side of the mountain ridge and descended down to the pickup parking lot through grassy land and a forest.

We were pretty tired after hiking 22km for about 8,5 hours, but it was the best walk I have ever done in my life. Absolutely stunning!

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