Yes! I have been dying to do the Tongariro Crossing walk for years but never been able to convince anyone to do it with me.
The whanau from Brisbane emailed saying that it was on the agenda for them when they visited New Zealand in February and did anyone want to come along. I was in!
A quick four hour drive up to Howard’s Lodge at Whakapapa Village to meet the others and I was ready to go.
We had dinner at the newly painted Speights Bar – quiet place during the week, big meals, perfect for before and after a days hike.
Weather forecast was looking good the night before but when I woke up and saw the clouds and felt the rain I was a little disappointed.
This, however, did little to deter the hoards of other walkers who set off up the mountain for the day. There were bus loads of people.
We started out at a very fast walk to get in front of a few slow pokes then as we hit the staircase our pace dropped off just a fraction.
I was horrified at how unprepared some of the walkers were, no warm clothing wearing street shoes thinking it was a friendly tarmac walk.
The view was nonexistent for majority of the morning all the way up to the saddle.
We decided to venture up Tongariro as it was only an extra 1.5 hours. It was good to do but we could not see five metres in front of us. The cloud was very thick and heavy.
We snapped off a few photos of us at the top with no view as a back drop and ducked back down the hill a little for shelter while we ate our lunch at 9:30am – breakfast seemed like hours ago.
As we cleared the top of the saddle again we felt the strong winds which I might add were helping blow the clouds away. Finally, we had a view of the mountain valley below us and stunning views of the three sulphur Emerald lakes in the crater.
For such a baron environment it was actually quite pretty. Lots of colours and striking rock formations.
There was one lone rock to the side of track that had toilet written on it as when Jacqui and went for a pee behind it there was toilet paper and all sorts behind there – yucky!
We then found out later on once we had continued further up the track that everyone from both ends of the track would have seen our bare butts behind the rock.
One last scan of the scenery behind us then it was downhill to the car park where we were greeted by our pick up amongst a good hundred more other walkers waiting for their buses.
Back to the lodge for a quick shower and hot spa before the bus loads arrived back.
Another pub meal and bed after a nice long days walk.
Definitely need to get up there again soon to catch the views from atop of Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe. Maybe running as part of my training for the Coast to Coast race 2010.
Posted by michellecolerocks 