Tackling Tongariro

[Ed note: 90% of this post is lifted from Stef, Brian, and Marks’s FindPenguins post]

After enjoying Wellington to the fullest, we (Brian) drove to Taupo. It was a 5+ hour windy, beautiful drive packed to the gills with 5 people and their stuff, but luckily mostly uneventful. Once we arrived at our Airbnb (a comfy, modern house just off Lake Taupō in a suburb), our focus was on preparing for and endlessly dissecting our planned hike for the next day, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. The 12+ mile hike is considered the most iconic day hike in New Zealand and one of the best in the world. It's also difficult, with 2,800 feet of elevation gain and the potential for changing weather conditions on the exposed slopes, so there were a lot of discussion about clothing, food, water, and hiking poles. For me this was going to be a huge challenge and I was worried about slowing my fellow travelers down. We left at 6 AM to drive an hour to the parking lot at the end of the hike and took a pre-booked shuttle that drove us to the trailhead (a 30-minute ride). We actually started hiking around 8:30 am.

The trail winds between two active volcanoes - Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngauruhoe, the latter of which represents Mount Doom (in Mordor) in the Lord of the Rings movies. The hike started gradually on a well-maintained trail through pretty but desolate lava rock plains. It did not take long before the uphill got quite a bit steeper, and twice we passed large signs warning us that it was about to get a lot harder, so consider turning back. Not encouraging, particularly since I was already struggling a bit! As Boromir says in the first LOTR movie, ‘one does not simply walk into Mordor’. The first half of the hike was a “conga line” as Alex would call it, with people like me who were slow and had to stop frequently causing bottlenecks. Finally we got some flat as we hiked past Mount Doom through flat moonscape terrain before we made the last steep push to the summit at 6,187 feet. That was sort of a celebration since we finished the hardest climb and now had amazing views of the stunningly green Emerald Lakes. On the other hand we still had 6 miles to go, and the next part was a steep scree field of loose rock and shifting sand. It was daunting, but later we all had to admit that parts of it were fun as we ski-skidded down some sections once we had gotten the hang of it. No one would have been eager to do it again, though - thank goodness for hiking poles. Next we were treated to an easy section leading to views of pristine Blue Lake. Then we started the long descent - first a few miles of long switchbacks as we entered areas with low vegetation, then a shaded bush track with ferns and a fast-running stream.

By the end of the day we had done over 13 miles and had very sore muscles, but also a real sense of accomplishment.Read more