The Tongariro Crossing

The Tongariro crossing is considered one of the best day walks in New Zealand. I tried to do it when I was in Taupo during the winter, but it was snowing so I wasnt allowed. I was really fortunate when I managed it this time as both days surrounding when I did it, they closed the walk because of rain.

We had an early start - 5.40am as its an hour and a half drive from Taupo to the start of the walk in the National Park. I did the walk with a guy called Matthias from Germany. The first hour or so of the track is through low lying heather and mosses, with bits of spikey lava sticking out all over the place as its a giant lava field. It looked beautiful in the morning dew and sunshine.

After an hour or so, we got to the first bit of uphill-ness called the 'Devils Staircase'. Climbing up alongside more spikey lava and stuff. Once we were at the top, we could take a side track to the summit of Mt Ngaruhoe. This is quite a famous volcano as its a really good typical cone shape and it's also the mountain that Peter Jackson used as Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. Although the Alpine Crossing is a famous walk with a very well maintained track, there is no path up the volcano, its a case of find your own way scrambling up scree and ash. I've walked up a fair few mountains in my time, but this was probably the first one that I've felt I actually climbed. It was really challenging as the sides are really steep and covered in ash and scree/ting pebbles. It was like walking up a sand dune except there are lots of big spikey bits of rock too! It was really hard work.


About a third of the way up, we managed to scramble over to a lava flow and climb up that, which was easier as that was actually solid rock attached to the side of the mountain. But it was still a case of clambering up the rocks on all fours to stop me falling down!

I thought I was really slow climbing up the mountain, but we did it in a pretty good time and the view at the top was well worth it! We could see all the way across the rest of the walk, over to lake Taupo, Mt Ruapehu and Mt Taranaki in the distance, sticking out of a sea of cloud covering the west side of the country. I was happy I got to see that mountain in the end as it was so cloud covered and foggy when I was closer to it in New Plymouth. The whole of the west of the North Island was covered in cloud but our mountain was stopping it come any further fortunately, so we had brilliant weather all day!



The way down the volcano consisted of scree-sliding all the way down. I found it easiest to adopt a sort of surf-board stance and shuffle down that way. I still fell over loads and even with all the additional padding my ass has accumulated over the past 15 months, it still hurt! When we got down we had to empty our boots of all the ash and stones we had picked up from sliding down scree over 1000m.

After that, we had a nice flat walk across a crater (which my legs appreciated!) and then up the other edge to get to the red crater. I didnt quite twig that's where we got to immediately...


Lorna: Wow, look at the colours in that rock, it's so red
Matthias: mmm, I guess that's why its called the red crater
Lorna: Oh, is that where we are? Aaaah, that makes sense now!

We had our lunch overlooking the crater, then carried along over the ridge until we had to start out descent down tothe emerald lakes. From there we headed through another crater to get to the blue lake and then around the volcano to start our descent.


The way down was gentle and windey and we passed a few vents with steam and smelly sulphur coming out, just to remind us we were walking on a volcano.

We were so lucky with the weather. Both days either side were called off because of cloud and rain. Our weather couldnt have been any better, it was lovely, so glad I had the chance to do it!