Tongariro Crossing
Trip Start
Aug 13, 2007
1
55
91
Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Tongariro National Park,
North Island,
New Zealand
Sunday, April 13, 2008
The walk is 18.5km one way, so you need to arrange transport to pick you up at the end. It is also advisable to arrange transport to take you to the start, as although there is a car park, it is notorious for thefts, as obviously thieves know that you are on the walk and won't be back for several hours. The easiest way to do the crossing is from Mangatepopo to Ketetahi. You can do it the other way but that involves a lot more climbing.
We stayed in Discovery Lodge as this is the closest accommodation to the start of the walk. We arrived on Friday night around 9.30pm and went straight to bed, as the bus the next day was at 6am. We were on the 2nd bus, the 1st one at 5.30am was full. It's good to get there so early as this avoids the crowds. It can be very busy, especially in summer, but since it's April, it was fairly quiet.
The walk is spectacular, going through different terrains, and going past two of the 3 mountains based in the National Park, Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe. If you are super fit you can add on an addition to the 18.5km, by climbing Mt Ngauruhoe. When you see the photos you'll understand why we didn't do this. It is a very challenging climb, and takes 2-3hrs. You need to take this into account when arranging pick up transport at the end.
There is also a less challenging addition, the Tongariro summit, which takes 1hr 20min. Graham was fairly keen to do this, but since this was my first one day walk, I was feeling quite tired at the point where we reached the start of the Tongariro summit. Maybe next time! We did the walk in just under 7hrs, with a few small rest breaks in between. We could have taken longer as there were 3 pick up times, but we didn't feel that we needed longer breaks. The last bit of the walk from Ketetahi Hut to the car park went from a fairly barren landscape, followed by scrubland, then through bushland, and the walk was completed by walking through a forest.
I felt a bit sore after we finished, and we went back to our accommodation to relax after a tiring morning. We ate at the restaurant at Discovery Lodge, and the food was pretty decent. We went to bed at 9pm as we were so worn out from the walk!
On Sunday, we were up and about by 8am, which is unheard of normally on a Sunday, but we had had a really good night's sleep of 10hrs or so. I discovered that my whole body ached, especially my calf and thigh muscles! Graham seemed to be fine.
After checking out, we headed to Ohakune, to go to Mangawhero Falls, which are situated along the road towards the Turoa Ski Area. Unfortunately, due to the dry summer we've had, the falls were dry...So we took some photos of Mt Ruapehu, the 3rd mountain in the park.
After a quick visit to the big carrot in Ohakune, we headed back home for a lazy Sunday afternoon..
