Tongariro Northern Circuit
It was from one “great walk” straight onto another – no rest for the wicked! The day after finishing the River Journey we headed out on the Tongariro Northern Circuit – which encompasses the “best day walk in NZ” – the Tongariro crossing. Due to time constraints we decided to miss out the first day (Whakapapa Village to Mangatepopo – which is apparently very boggy and not a great days walk) and started at Mangatepopo instead with the 1000+ day walkers (ants/lemmings all following each other) on the crossing.
It was a hard climb up to the South Crater but the views were worth it – as it was a beautiful clear day we were rewarded with views all the way over to Mount Taranaki (somewhere on our “next time we are in NZ list”).
The walk over the South Crater to the Red Crater reminded us of crossing towards Kibo Hut on Kili – only without the altitude sickness!
We decided not to climb Mount Ngauruhoe (aka Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings – a wee bit digitally enhanced!) but walked round to the summit of Tongariro instead – with views of Ngauruhoe (in the fore ground) and Ruapehu (to the rear).
It was then up over the Red Crater to the Emerald Lakes – a group of 3 amazingly blue lakes – sitting by one makes a great lunch spot as you watch the herds of day walkers gingerly walk down a steep scree slope – not knowing that it is easier to walk fast/run down than slow – even I did over taking on a downhill section (very rare occurance!)
From there it was a walk past the Blue Lake down to Ketetahi Hut and our base for the evening. After an hour or so we were rewarded with a view of the hut – only about 50 meters below us – but we had some very long, drawn out, zigzags to negotiate and what looked like a 10 min walk to the hut turned into a 30 min ziiiiiiiggggggg-zaaaaggggggg.
Ketetahi hut is situated over looking Taupo and we were rewarded with some great views from our tent – including one of our first sunsets in NZ.
The second and third days had us walking through / on top of lava flows and desert – very barren, hot and surprisingly hard work! At the end of the second day we dropped into a beech forest and crossed a stream – which, although we knew was coming up, was quite bizzare considering the terrain we had been walking in!
I really enjoyed the crossing day (despite the lemmings) but found the last two days really hard and quite dull – Nick on the other hand thought it was all great and has it ranked higher than me in the list of walks we have done so far!
Tags: Great Walk, New Zealand, Travel, Trek
Jenni
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