Tongariro Crossing

This weekend we "tramped" Tongariro Crossing. It's recognized as being New Zealand's best one day tramp and almost the entire length is through raw volcanic terrain. It is approximately 20km long and typically takes around 6-8 hours to complete (it took us 7). It's located in the centre of the north island about 3 hours NE of New Plymouth. We left Friday after work and took the most direct route, which happens to be named the "Forgotten Highway" - we quickly realized we really should have forgot about it and taken a different route. But it was too late. I have quite a weak stomach especially when it comes to motion sickness. This was literally me for half the car ride:

Not fun!!!

It was a single lane highway that manoeuvred around and around and around the mountains. About a third of it was gravel and at some points we were hugging the mountain with a cliff on the other side and I honestly don't know what we would have done if there was a car coming the opposite way. There was barely enough room for one car, never mind two. Tyler even started to feel a bit sick and he was driving! We took an alternate route home ;)

A crazy tunnel along the way. No signs or lights as to who goes through first. Good thing we only saw 7 other cars the whole way there!

The next morning the shuttle bus left at 6:30am to take us to the start of the tramp. The early start is to avoid the sun on the climb up. We didn't realize it would be so dark and didn't have a light....everyone else did. We stayed close to them, but shortly after 7 it was light enough to see on our own. It was quite cold in the morning, we wore our toques and gloves. After the sun came up the weather was perfect, with little wind. We were lucky as this area quite often gets a lot of low cloud cover and the winds can be so severe they close the crossing.

Starting out the hike in the dark! 

Prepared for the cold weather.

Beautiful sky

You can faintly see Mount Taranaki in the background, which is the mountain close to our house.

The first few km were fairly easy, and I thought "this isn't so bad". Well, then came the stairs. And more stairs. And then some more stairs. It was definitely a workout! But we took it slow and had lots of breaks and eventually made it to the top. There were TONS of people on this tramp. It's very popular as the views are incredible. I heard that a few weeks ago, 1200 people completed the hike in one day. I don't think it was that busy this weekend.

Stairmaster!

Almost there. Checking out the views.

Made it! Well to the top of this peak at least...more to come.

There were so many different types of landscapes and vegetation, which is why this hike is so popular. You get to see a bit of everything. Below is one of the active volcanoes, Mount Ngauruhoe (also known as Mount Doom for you Lord of the Rings fans). The pictures really don't do the area justice. Everything is so huge and you feel so small standing on top, beside, and underneath them.

Mount Doom. You could summit the top in 2.5 hours - we decided to skip it :)

After another steep incline up loose gravel, we made it to the Red Crater which is the highest point of the Crossing at 6,200 feet. We were excited the rest of the tramp was to be mostly downhill from here!

Red Crater

Tyler was excited to see Red Crater :)

Below are the three green pools which are given their emerald colour by dissolved volcanic minerals. Around the pools there were active steam vents, emitting sulphur dioxide gas. It very strongly smelled like rotten eggs and was actually quite disgusting. Everyone stopped at the lakes to eat lunch, but I don't know how they could stomach eating anything with that smell in the air! Nonetheless they were very pretty to look at. Two guys jumped in one of the lakes even though I'm sure you're not supposed to....YOLO I guess!

Below are views of the Red Crater and the gravel track we had to descend. There was so much gravel you couldn't walk down the hill without falling. So we slid. It was like rock skiing and actually kind of fun! You can also see the solidified lava flows from when the volcano last erupted which was very cool.

The colours were amazing!

The dark brown rock on the right is the solidified lava flows. 

Low cloud cover as we descended the other side of the volcano

There is a light system in place to determine if it is safe to continue. No red light so off we went!

More steam being emitted.

Finally we were on our way to descend the volcano. By this time we had been tramping for about 5 hours and our legs were sore and feet were tired! And then we saw the track down to the bottom. The track you see below that looks like a river is what we still had left to complete. About 7km downhill, it took us around 2.5 hours. I think the downhill was harder on the legs than going up!

The track we descended (you can see the hut).

Mount Rahui is the other active volcano and it last erupted in 2012. We stopped at a hut 1.5km from Rahui that had a hole in the side of it from a boulder that crashed through it from the eruption!

Mt. Rahui venting steam and sulpher dioxide gas.

Nearly there! The last 2km were through the trees which was a nice change of scenery.

By the end of the hike we were exhausted. We finished around 2pm and went back to the hotel and unintentionally fell asleep for a few hours. Then we went out for dinner and didn't realize until we got back to the hotel that I had left my purse at the restaurant! I've NEVER done that!! I was SO tired! Thankfully someone turned it in and we were reunited. Overall the hike was amazing and we can't wait for more tramping adventures in NZ!