By Ruth
Distance: 27 km
Today we finally had our first real alpine experience in New Zealand: the Tongariro crossing. If you’re not familiar, Tongariro is a park with active volcanic features, it is also where they filmed Mount Doom for Lord of the Rings.
The weather forecast for today was not great; low visibility, high winds, and cold were predicted. We had brought an extra day of food with us on this section, in case of just such a situation. So we could have waited one day for things to improve before heading over, except that tomorrow was supposed to be even worse.
So we set out early this morning for the crossing. First challenge of the day was getting a hitch from the holiday park to the trailhead. Few people were heading that way this morning due to the aforementioned weather predictions. Luckily a nice French couple picked us up in their camper van and went out of their way to drop us right at the trailhead.
The first hour or so of the day was gorgeous.
As we climbed higher, the wind began to pick up. And it started to rain. The higher we went, the stronger the wind became. I wanted a break but there was nowhere to take shelter. Eventually we came across an outhouse, and we huddled inside to get out of the wind.
As we went higher visibility got worse as well. Soon we were in a cloud. A windy, wet cloud. It felt less like getting rained on and more like being sprayed with a hose. We still managed to make out some of the features of Tongariro, like one of the Emerald Lakes.
I couldn’t take many pictures because of the wind. Also, my hands were freezing and I didn’t want to take my gloves off to take a picture. Here is me attempting a selfie with my mittens still on, and somehow only managing to take a screenshot instead.
Once we got over the highest point of the hike, we began walking down along the rim of a crater. This was when the wind was the strongest and we were really buffeted along until we finally headed down onto a field of volcanic sand. The scenery (what we could see of it anyway) was really cool – like another planet.
By this time it was around noon and we had yet to take a break all day. We knew there was a hut towards the end of the hike and we were targeting that as a dry place to eat lunch. In my head I was imagining us having lunch in a cozy hut, with a fire going so we could dry out our gloves, and maybe even a stove so we could make tea! In reality, when we arrived around 1, it was exactly that. It was such a wonderful refuge from the elements – we stayed for two hours!
When we finally dragged ourselves out, it was raining pretty hard, but the wind was not as strong. The trail we followed down to Whakapapa took us beyond the classic Tongariro Crossing route, and once we diverged from that path, the trail quality instantly became worse. Where before there was beautifully maintained boardwalk and wide gravel paths, here there was mud, rutted out trail, and shoulder-high shrubs to brush past. It was a bit of a disappointment because we were expecting smooth sailing into town after leaving the hut. But eventually the rain stopped and we finished the day like we started it: in sunshine.
