Part 3 of 3 - Tongariro Crossing

The Central North Island Volcanoes, background to foreground: Mt. Ruapehu, Mt. Ngauruhoe, and the Red Crater of Mt. Tongariro

After finishing our Whanganui River trip, we set off to plan for the next day's hike. Tongariro Crossing is 6-7 hours one-way, so it is a good idea to make arrangements for a shuttle at one end or the other. Nearly everyone hikes it the same direction because it's easier that way, so you can either park at one end and then get shuttled back to the start, or you can park at the end and get shuttled to the beginning. We called a shuttle company on Tuesday afternoon to inquire about their hike-to-your-car shuttle availability for Wednesday. We had the option of 6:15 or 9:15, and in a moment of insanity for us night owls we chose the 6:15 am departure.

This particular shuttle company offered free camping to those who used their shuttle services, and we were more than eager to take them up on it. We have quite a good arrangement worked out for sleeping in the back of Lu. We move our bags and food boxes to the front seats and we stretch out on the mattress in the back. We even use a piece of cloth closed in a door (with an open window) as a screen to let some air in while keeping the bugs out. However, something went terribly wrong at this campsite. As the sun went down, the mosquitos came out. First we patched a little hole in our 'screen' and killed a bunch of skeeters. Then we closed the window behind the screen because somehow they were still getting in. We killed more. Matt kept cursing and hitting the overhead light to smoosh them, turning the light on and off as he hit it. We banged against the windows. Still more mosquitos appeared. We switched the air system to recirculating instead of outside air in case they were coming through the vents. Then Matt decided we should move the car away from the hedgerow and into the middle of the field. Still they pursued us. I'm sure the other people at the campsite thought we were nuts with all the banging and lights going on and off then moving the car into the middle of the field at 11 pm. Matt slept completely inside his mummy bag with EARPLUGS to block out the incessant buzzing. For those of you who don't know, Matt sleeps like a dead log and that was probably the first time in his life he slept with earplugs.

We woke up at 5 am on Monday morning with enough blood to get to the end of the trail parking lot on time for our 6:15 pickup. Tongariro Crossing is rightfully billed as the best one-day hike in New Zealand, but they say it's worth waiting for a fine day. Luckily for us, we didn't have to wait because Wednesday couldn'tve been finer. We arrived at the trailed just before 7 am and set off slightly ahead of most of the people from our shuttle. The sun hadn't touched our side of the mountain yet when we started and there was frost on the moss.



The first 45 minutes or so were pretty flat, and then we started a steep climb. Matt went up the slopes like a mountain goat or something while I lagged behind. At the top of that climb we had the option to hike to the summit of Mt. Ngauruhoe, the cone-shaped mountain in the above photo. We passed on this 2-3 hour side-hike and continued onwards. Looking down from where we came, we could see an endless line of ant-sized people on the trail below us. It looked like we were mostly ahead of the biggest wave of hikers.



We hiked through a large, flat crater before another steep ascent. Basically nothing lived or grew up here. We saw no plants, not even moss. No birds. We saw a few flies and that was about it. In spite of the obvious dearth of living things, some prize idiots thought that it would be ok to drop their banana and orange peels on the trail. I picked up the banana peel. Overall, there was basically no litter, especially considering that nearly TWO THOUSAND people hike this track on a fine day like ours.

At the highest point on the hike, we had Mt. Ngauruhoe behind us, the appropriately named Red Crater to our right, and the Emerald Pools in front of us. You could hardly ask for a better view.

The Emerald Pools are halfway through the hike and it was only 10 am! We stopped and ate part of our lunches before continuing onward (and downward). After a few hours of downward hiking we were well into tussock grass. After another hour we were in forest.

We found a really cool fungus growing right next to the trail in the forest. It looked like a flower or a misplaced sea anemone coming out of the ground! Kerry (aka Tokoroa bat girl) informed us that this was a type of stinkhorn fungus. We didn't notice the smell, but we did notice its attractiveness to flies.


We arrived at the end of the trail at 1 pm. There were about a dozen people hanging around waiting for a shuttle to pick them up (and the first shuttles don't come until around 3 pm). It felt awfully good to be able to walk straight to our car and take off our boots instead of having to wait around for a shuttle. We were pleased with our decision to take the early shuttle and hike to our car. For some of the hike we had people right ahead and behind us, but for a lot of it there weren't other people in sight. I think if we'd started an hour later we would not have ever escaped the view of other people. It took us 6 hours, which is the low end of the estimate for how long it should take, even with my slow uphill climbs compared to Matt's mountain goat stamina and agility. This was definitely the best day hike I've ever done.

I highly recommend checking out this area on Google Earth. You can follow the trail in most places. Unfortunately, the Emerald Pools are just at the edge of high and low quality images so you can't quite see all of them.

Trail Start: 39° 8'40.49"S, 175°34'51.69"E
Trail End: 39° 4'4.87"S, 175°39'24.52"E
Emerald Pools: 39° 8'4.75"S, 175°39'15.28"E
Mt. Ngauruhoe: 39° 9'22.59"S, 175°37'58.16"E

Carrie