Peaks and Places | Travel and Adventure Blog

Before we headed out of the North Island, Taylor insisted we do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. I had heard of this hike, but really didn’t know much about it. Taylor and I had been to Tongariro once before, but had really done the bare minimum. We did the visitor center and hiked 10 minutes to Gollum’s Pool (very pretty but nothing like the movie), but we hadn’t actually checked out the park much. A big reason for this was it was always pretty cold there. This is the only spot on the North Island that has glaciers or ski resorts, due to its elevation it stays a good deal colder that the rest of the North Island. In the winter, we hadn’t wanted to blatantly head toward colder weather, so we had kind of neglected to see Tongariro, until now.

Tongariro National Park is located pretty central in the North Island of New Zealand, near Lake Taupo, the largest lake in the country. Both Lake Taupo and Tongariro were formed due to volcanic activity. Lake Taupo is a giant caldera from a super volcano, and the National Park encompasses the still active volcanic areas. As the plates moved, Lake Taupo volcanic activity calmed down and new areas of volcanic activity started in the area of the National Park. New Zealand has some pretty cool plate tectonics, which is a big reason why it has so many diverse landscapes.

The Tongariro Crossing is traditionally 19.5-20.2km long (mixed information from DOC), one way, which takes 5-8 hours. Everything we read said there is a start and an end, you park at the end and take a shuttle to the start, then hike to your car, no other way. This sounded kind of nice, it would mean no back tracking over the same track you just hiked up. We priced out one shuttle company, for the 30 minutes shuttle ride it would cost $60 NZ a person, $120 (~80USD) for both of us. Every shuttle service charged the same $60, and harped that a portion goes to DOC to maintain the park, which is all well and good, but for us $120 is a lot of money. We’ve gotten pretty good at stretching our budget since we’ve been here, and spending $120 to hike seemed pretty ridiculous.

We did more research and really struggled to find any alternative, even the official DOC website said the only option to complete the Crossing was to hire a shuttle. Eventually we found a way that might work. The parking lot at the start has a 4-hour limit, after which you get towed (seems aggressive), but apparently this 4-hour limit only applies in summer months. We just happened to be 10 days from New Zealand’s “start” of summer months, Labor Weekend (different from Labor Day in the US). So, if we were reading the DOC website correctly, we should be able to park for as long as we want at the start of the trail. That means we could hike up as far as we want, then turn back and hike back* to The Van, and keep our $120.

*If you are wondering why we didn’t park at the end (which has no parking restriction) and hike up that way, good idea, we could have done this and not gotten towed, even in “summer”. The down sides of this is the end is a much lower elevation than the start, meaning more climbing, plus from what I saw, the second half looked a lot less cool than the first half.

So now we had a plan, the weather still looked perfect, so we got up nice and early to get started. We planned to hike to Blue Lake, a spot in the trail that was roughly half way. That meant we would still cover the same distance as doing the Crossing traditionally, but we would actually end up climbing a lot more. We planned to spend 6-7 hours hiking, so we brought plenty of food, water, and sunscreen. The first hour or so was fairly flat, nice and easy. The Tongariro Crossing is notorious for being very difficult, signs all along the trail warn you to turn around if you feel at all tired, and after this first hour, we were thinking that were pretty dramatic. One of the many warning signs along the trail said, in summer, 2 people a week get airlifted off the trail.

About 2 hours in, we finished up our first major hill. We topped out into the Central Crater, a big flat crater in the center of Tongariro peak and Ngauruhoe Peak – AKA Mt Doom. Walking was pretty easy going through the crater and we made quick work of this section. We did really enjoy this portion, the views of Tongariro and Mt Doom were awesome and the weather couldn’t have been better. As we crossed the crater, we could see the next hill we would have to climb, up to Red Crater, it looked a lot tougher than what we had just done.

We wouldn’t actually be hiking through Red Crater, like we were doing in Central Crater, instead, we would just hike onto and along the rim. The ridgeline we had to hike up to get to Red Crater was much steeper than what we had hiked earlier. To compound the misery, the ground was more uneven than it had been, making each step tougher. I don’t remember a ton from this section of the climb, just that it was pretty tough and a lot longer than I expected it to be. After one heart breaking false peak, we finally made it to the top of the ridge and could see Red Crater. Red Crater was a quite different from Central Crater, while Central Crater was flat, Red Crater looked like it was continually falling in on itself. True to its name, they rock of the crater was a deep red. Neither of us really knew what to expect out of Red Crater, but we were both very impressed, it was unlike anything I have ever seen before.

As we made our way along the ridge, we crested the top and could see down the other side, across to Blue Lake and down the the much smaller and closer Emerald Lakes. The hike to Blue lake, our predetermined turn around, didn’t look too far, but the hill we had to go down off of Red Crater was even steeper than the one we had just climbed. Both Taylor and I were still feeling good, so we decided to stick to our plan and hike to Blue Lake.

The hill down from Red Crater was not only steep, but also super gravely/sandy. Each step sank in a few inches and washed out a bit, going down it really wasn’t bad, but I started to dread the climb back up we would have to make to return to The Van. The entire descent from Red Crater we made our way down towards Emerald Lakes, which are 3 pools of volcanic spring water at the foot of the Red Crater. Along the way, we saw a ton of steam coming out of multiple different geysers along the hillside, we were quickly remined of Rotorua, or Yellowstone, with the strong sulfur smell of hot springs. I’m not entirely sure what color Emerald is, but these pools looked more blue than anything else. They had some awesome different colors on their edges, where new spring water was coming in and they looked somewhat similar to lakes and pools at Yellowstone, but not as colorful. After the hike we looked up how warm the Lakes were, thinking they would be hot since there was steam everywhere, the best we found was “very cold and acidic”. I wasn’t very satisfied with this but oh well.

After Emerald Lakes, we had a flat stretch, then one last fairly small climb to Blue Lake. The climb was easy compared to Red Crater, and we made quick work of it. Blue Lake was very blue, and much bigger than Emerald Lakes. We stopped here and had a snack and looked back at Red Crater. After a few minutes of contemplating if our $120 savings would justify the climb back up, we started our way back.

We hiked down from Blue Lake and back up to Emerald Lakes. It was less crowded now, so we grabbed a bunch of pictures before starting the worst of the climb. Climbing the backside of Red Crater was significantly tougher than coming down it. The sandy ground that was kind of nice for cushion on the way down made for every step slipping out and wasting half your effort. This climb was a slow one, we took multiple breaks to catch our breath and enjoy the views. We slowly chipped away at it and eventually reach the top, both of us very relieved.

Once we got to the top of Red Crater, we knew the worst of our day was behind us. We stopped to have lunch with a perfect view of Mt Doom and Central Crater. The descent to Central Crater was long, much longer than I remember, but it wasn’t too hard. The entire way we were looking right at Mt Doom, which was cool. By the time we got to Central Crater, Taylor and I were pretty tired, but we knew it was all downhill, so how hard could it be. We breezed through Central Crater again and prepped for the home stretch.

On the far side of Central Crater, a sign said we still had 2.5 hours left, which seemed like so much, but we kept going. About an hour later and both of us were really feeling it. We were moving lot slower than we normally do and my feet were hurting way more than normal. By the final kilometer, both Taylor and I were dragging, probably moving half the speed we normally would, turns out Taylors feet were hurting too. We finally stumbled back into the parking lot right at the 7 hour mark, and thankfully The Van was still there. We were way too tired to figure out a solution if The Van got towed, so I was very glad our parking situation worked out.

On the way to camp we grabbed a few snacks and some beer, we earned it. The camp we were staying at had hot showers for a few bucks, we earned those too and were very glad to get a hot shower after such a long day. The last time I remember being this tired was after a hike at Whatipu, our first week in NZ, where Taylor and I walked on the beach for over 5 miles, it was miserable but awesome. All in all, Tongariro Crossing was amazing, it was both Taylor and my own favorite hike we have done in NZ, and it’s probably the best hike I have ever done. Saving the $120 was worth it for us, but we really got lucky with the time of the year we went. If it was actually winter it would have been snowy, and if it was actually summer we would have to pay for the shuttle. The extra effort sucked at the time, but in the grand scheme of things, it was worth it all day. I am very glad Taylor insisted we go on this one, I really wasn’t sure it would be worth all the messing around, but it definitely was and it would have been a shame to miss it.