Tongariro National Park has to offer quite a few interesting hikes (or tramps as they say in New Zealand) and you get spectacular views of the surrounding area – at least on a good day. ;)
Tongariro Northern Circuit
I met up with a group of CouchSurfers from Wellington on Wellington Anniversary Weekend (The Wellies had monday off, so they could come for an extended weekend) to do a three day tramp: The Tongariro Northern Circuit.
We started out at Whakapapa Village where we left our cars and walked for about 3 hours to our first destination: Mangatepopo Hut to stay there for the night. The huts are pretty well equipped with gas heating and gas stoves.
The next morning it was raining and you could hardly see 50m, so we decided to stay at the hut for another night and try doing the Tongariro Apline Crossing (a one day hike) the next day.
As the weather still did not clear during the next night, we just took off, having had a nice weekend on the Mangatepopo Hut, playing Uno, cooking and singing (or at least tried to ;) ).
Tongariro Alpine Crossing
One week later I took my second attempt to do the Tongariro Crossing. This time I was joined by the Auckland CouchSurfing group and we were 12 people altogether. The only two CouchSurfing hosts in Turangi were crowded for that event. It was really really great of them to host all of us and we had a brilliant time there.
The weather was perfect and I decided to ask some people if they wanted to climb up to the summit of Mt. Ngauruhoe (aka “Mt. Doom” in “Lord of the Rings”). Remo and I were the only two to be keen on doing that so we got up at 5am and started our accent to the top. It was good to do most of the climbing in the shade, before the sun came up over the mountains.
As there is no marked path leading up Mt. Doom, all you’ve got to do is climb. UP!
That is much harder than it sounds, because you take one step and slide down half a step due to the volcanic debris. In the end it took us the better part of an hour to get up – and between 10 and 15 minutes to slide down. :-) What FUN!
In the afternoon we met the rest of our group, who did just do the normal Crossing without the summit to Mt. Ngauruhoe. There are lot’s of sights to see on the way, as the red crater, emerald lakes and of course on a clear day the views of Lake Taupo or over to Mt Eggmont (Taranaki) in the far south-west.
