Saturday 01/12/2007 - NEW-ZEALAND (North Island), Taupo "The Tongariro crossing"

We had an early start today to do the Tongariro Crossing. This walk is often described as the best one-day hike in New-Zealand as it provides the opportunity to experience some of the most scenic and active volcanic areas of the Tongariro National Park. We booked a shuttle with Tongariro expeditions for NZ$49, they pick you up at your hotel, drive you to the beginning of the track and pick you up at the end of the track to drive you back to Taupo. The bus picked us up at 5.45am and we arrived at the beginning of the track, Mangatepopo car park, at 7.20am. The weather was very cloudy so we could not see the Ngauruhoe (2287m) and Tongariro (1967m) summits. First we walked through the Mangatepopo Valley which has only very low vegetation (flat and easy) and then climbed towards the top of the Red Crater (1886m). As soon as we started going up we entered the mist and there was no more vegetation, only volcanic stones. We wanted to climb the Ngauruhoe summit to have a closer look at his crater but the mist did not allow us to do so. The climb to the top of the Red Crater was a bit tricky as the track is steep and there is a lot of loose stones, towards the end and all the way down the track is loose scree. From the top we could not see the view which is supposed to be very nice as the weather was still very misty but luckily when we started to go down towards the Emerald lakes the mist started to clear and we soon had a great view on those beautiful lakes. We crossed the central crater to get to the Blue lake and enjoyed a lot the moon like landscapes. After the Blue lake the track is only downhill. It descends around the northern slope of Tongariro and then descends in zig-zag towards the Ketetahi Hut through an Alpine landscape with dry herb fields. This part of the walk was a bit boring but then we entered a forest and walk through it up to the car park. We really enjoyed walking through this peaceful forest and luckily there was no other tourists around...which is rare when doing this walk as there are so many people on the track. In total it took us 6h40 to do the walk including around an hour of breaks. We could have been a bit more lucky with the weather but it was not that bad....it could have been misty all the way! We had a great day doing this beautiful walk.