Tongariro alpine crossing .....Dont believe the hype

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After our kayaking trip and 4 nights of very limited sleep and hard work actually staying pointing in the right direction in the canoe, (and also trying to keep my teeth) we decided to stay in a lodge. We where kindly dropped off by our Kayaking company at the National Park. The kayaking company Blazing Paddles comes highly recommended for the whanganui river. Fantastic service and we even got a cake at the end!!! (lucky i didnt loose my teeth on the branch!!)
The weather was crap for a couple of days but we needed rest and our lodge had acess to a jacuzzi............

Well finally, after waiting a couple of days for the weather to clear and the winds to drop we had a window of opertunity to do the much spoken about Tongario crossing.
The crossing is dubbed as the number one day walk in New Zealand,. It is 19.4 km long and the estimated average time it takes is 8 and a half hours. Lonelyplanet also rates this walk quite highly, and by the number of American tourists staying at the lodge we where at, it seemed to be true.
We paid the grand sum of $70NZ for both of us to be shuttled to the beggining of our walk, and picked up later as the walk is not circular, it actually crosses the "mountain range"
We awoken at 5.30 am, checked our gear and filled our water countainers, stepped out side the lodge and awaited the bus. While we were waiting we started to notice the people arriving to also do the mountain crossing.
One guy, started to put on sun block, almost a complete tube all over his neck and face, in fact it was dripping off the back of his jacket. After he had finished applying this cream, he looked so pale he could have been mistaken as the walking dead. We later found out he was a scientist!!!!!
We jumped aboard the bus and waited and waited, for 2 passengers that were late, this was not good because the weather forcast stated very high winds in the afternoon and we were going to be at almost 2000 metres, on quite a narrow ridge.
Finally the 2 people arrived, carring only a coffee each and a chocolate muffin.
Both were over weight, the guy having a slight resemberlance to a large dart player named Jockey Wilson. He was also wearing tennis shoes, shorts, and tennis t shirt, he then earned himself the nickname Ivan Lendle after the 1980s tennis player. We started to take bets on at what time he would be airlifted off the mountain!!!!!!
So to get back to the walk, we arrived in a dusty car park and immediatly set off at full steam along the marked track, desperatley trying to get ourselves to the front of all the groups that had also arrived to do the crossing. We do not find it very fun to walk in a caterpiller of tourists along a track.
The track is very well marked, too well for our liking, and also through the volcanic area it is a wooden board walk! A little different from walking in Scotland, or the lakes. Takes away the challenge of the mountain enviroment!
Finally we arrived at the foot of the Mountain, well i use the term mountain very loosley as it is in fact a Volcano, and we start our long slog uphill..........on wooden steps! wooden bloody steps on a mountain? eh?
wooden posts every 2 metres or so, mark the route. No point in looking at the map as this route is idiot proof.We even passed a sign stating the obvious that if the volcano erupted we should get off the mountain!!! really? or should we take a swim in the lava???

We walked through a big crater, which resembelled Mars, and then up the next section towards the ridge line and on towards the Emerald Lakes.
Once on the ridge (1850m) due to our delay, while our hungry friends ate breakfast and we sat on the bus, the wind had picked up to almost 120 km, it was literaly picking us up off our feet, and it was difficult to take photos or even stand up. Thank god for our walking poles! stones hit us in the face as the wind speed got higher and higher, and a few people turned back!
As we were descending the ridge to the lakes, we could see two older people in front clinging to a big rock in order to avoid being blown off!!!!
On our right we could see down into the volcano that was still active and had last released its full fury in 1996. Hopefully it would do the same soon in order to make this walk a bit more exciting.
I am not joking when we say we where glad that it was windy in order to give a bit of excitment, once past the Emerald lakes, the track starts to descend. the Emerald lakes are the photos you will see everywhere for this trip in advertisments, soak in this view, as after this it starts to descend on a seriously boring wheelchair track.
As we lost height towards the forest below, we came across a sign. "please keep to the track, as this is a very delicate Alpine enviroment" Now we agree you should keep to the track, but this track zig zagged back and forth like the great wall of china, covering more of the enviroment, in the most useless way. The hill is not so steep and a more direct route downwards woulsd be more pleasing to the Enviroment, legs and the eye!!!! we walked and walked down a path aimlessly zig zagging, the path is that from a country park, the wilderness is taken away.
The last part was a pleasent walk through native bush following the river downwards to the car park
We finished the crossing in 5 hrs instead of the 8.5 hrs, so we had a long wait for the bus to pick us up.
To our surprise Jockey Wilson/Evan lendle turned up on time!! a fine acheivement by the serial pie eater!!!


The final summary is that this is a very very overated route, we really do hope that this is not the best day walk in New Zealand, in fact after this walk we decided that we may reduce our stay in NZ by 1 month... Its a shame that the adverts, promotions promise so much and just deliver a scar on the landscape, such as the path desent that can probably be seen from space...................
However we are spoilt and have spent a lot of time in beautiful mountain areas around europe, this tongario crossing struggles to compete with a walk in the North York Moors.

Advertising and marketing 10/10 the actual walk 5/10............................

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Photos

P2020502
5 hrs

kiwi
the only kiwi we will see!

for 4 days, we thought this was the mountain we were going up!
when the bus drove further and further away from it, we were like - what the f..k???

storm!
we both got a good skin peel!!

pic from bus in the morning!
looks like bad weather!!

Comments

[rob]

awesome
Hey dude been following your blog looks pretty cool .. where you off to next? thinking about going travelling aswell, so many places to choose from. How did you decide ?

[richard and ilona]

hi rob decided on NZ quite easily, however we are quite dissapointed with NZ as it is a tourist trap!! we wanted wilderness.