Tongariro Crossing

Last year Wellington Anniversary Day took me a bit by surprise, but I managed to make it down to Marlborough Sounds and enjoy myself just fine. You’d have thought I’d have been ready for it this year, but no, it wasn’t until the Tuesday before the long weekend that I figured out what I was going to do: what I was going to do was the Tongariro Crossing.

I don’t think you’re supposed to mention the Tongariro Crossing without also mentioning something about how it’s New Zealand’s “most spectacular one-day walk.” Now I am not much of a hiker in the best (or otherwise!) of times but I was feeling adventurous and as though I wanted to get out of town again, since the last time I got out of town was so much fun. And so it was that I found myself over-packing (middle of summer? Better bring a scarf and a hat!) and piling into Pete and Andy’s car to head up to the national park on a Saturday afternoon.

The first nice thing that happened was that we had a beautiful day, weather-wise. The second nice thing was that when Pete, Alice and I (Andy’d done the walk earlier in the year so he was mountain biking that day) rocked up to the trailhead who did we see but our friend Amy, who lives about three blocks from Alice and Pete in Mt. Vic and was also in the park for the long weekend with some completely other friends.

Amy and her friends had breakfast before hitting the trail, but the three of us set off right away, befriending an Australian boy (“You can’t tell the difference in my accent? Listen: ‘seex feesh and cheeps,’ okay?”) named Sam on the way.

It started out pretty easy, this walk, and we all had a lovely time going along with all the other hordes of trampers. One of the things that was really interesting about the day was that we saw so many different types of landscape in just eight hours. It started out with a kind of rolling hill type of a deal, as you can sort of see in the pictures, with, like, a very civilized little wooden boardwalk along nice flat ground. Alice said it reminded her of Donegal in Ireland.

We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves–it was Alice’s first hike ever in her life and she was saying that if it didn’t get any worse she thought she’d do just fine–when all of a sudden we were at the Devil’s Staircase, which was much, much worse. Pete and Sam scampered off together like a couple of mountain goats, running up the Staircase and telling us they’d see us at the Emerald Lakes, leaving Alice and I to look allllllll the waaaaaay uuuuuuuup and contemplate our fate. We did eventually make it to the top, with a lot of huffing and puffing and rest breaks and shaky legs and a bit of turning purple. One very fit couple in their sixties or so hopped gracefully past us, remarking casually, “This is very invigorating, isn’t it!”

We did make it to the top though and were treated to the awesome sight of Ngauruhoe, AKA Mt. Doom from the Lord Of The Rings movies. It was very cool to look at but we were pretty happy not to have to climb it. Here in this picture you can see that in fact I am thrilled not to have to climb it.

Tongariro is very volcano-y and as we went along everything changed again and we were all of a sudden in this wild weird moonscapey place.

At Red Crater we started to see the ground smoke a little in places and to smell the sulphur coming up from the lakes.

Before the lakes, though, we had to slide down a long scree slope. It’s called scree, you see, as I told anyone who would listen, because THAT’S THE SOUND YOU MAKE WHEN YOU GO DOWN IT HA HA HA HA OW MY CALVES HA HA.

Anyway. Here’s Alice taking huge big giant steps and trying to avoid crashing into me while I try to take advantage of my photo opportunity.

And then finally the Emerald Lakes! Pretty good reward for the staircase and the scree and the so on and the so forth, even if they did have the merest suggestion of the faintest whiff of rotten eggs.

Alice and I were just minding our own business when Amy and her other friends showed up out of nowhere so we all sat down to have lunch together. Sam and Pete had told us to wait as long as we could at the lakes so we could all meet up after they did the summit, but we were pretty sure they wouldn’t catch up with us anytime soon so we were prepared to meet them at the car park at the end of the walk— chatting to everyone else and enjoying our lovely cucumber-spinach-and-hummus sandwiches in the meantime, watching all the other hikers fall down the scree slope and listening to someone who’d actually managed to carry a guitar with her up the Staircase somehow.

Much to our collective shock and awe, Pete and Sam did show up while we were still eating, giving us plenty of opportunity to run around taking more pictures of weird geothermal activity.

Here is some smoke roiling up out of the ground upon which I was currently walking—not the most calming sensation, I can assure you.

Here is a lovely pumice-like, very lightweight volcanic rock for your perusal.

And here I am sort of…fondling that pumice-like very lightweight rock, because Sam had been all “Look sexy for the camera!” and I’d been all “Hi, have you noticed that I am wearing baggy hiking clothes and that my hair is refusing to listen to all reason here so “sexy” isn’t really part of the equation?” and he was all “Just try,” and this is the end result of that conversation.

Soon it was time to head on down, so we said goodbye to Amy and friends and started motoring along, getting into yet another type of environment, sort of a lonely high moor type place. Later we would walk through meadows of broomsticky-looking stuff and also a lot of flax. Here you can see Lake Taupo in the distance.

Taking a break at one of the huts, Alice considers that maybe this whole hiking thing wasn’t such a good idea.

By this point we were pretty sure we were going to be late to get the shuttle driven by the rather obstreperous owner of the hostel (the same one who’d denied us a free cup of tea that morning before the hike, prompting some wailing and gnashing of teeth from me and “Wow, you’re getting really British” from Alice) and we were tired and low on water and I had two big blisters coming, one on each toe.

But it turned out okay. We sang all the way down through the high meadowy bits (Pete and Alice sang UK/Irish songs I didn’t know and I sang them the entire catalogue of Songs We Used To Sing At Camp Kahdalea Circa 1987, which they didn’t know) and we started getting into some native-ish bush, tree ferns and all, and the tuis started singing and we kept thinking we were just around the corner from the car park and then finally we were just around the corner from the car park and the lady driving our shuttle got all mad at us, going “You’re twenty minutes late” but we thought that was pretty good, for an eight-hour hikes, and we immediately fell asleep in the car.

We met back up with Andy at the backpackers (of whom no pictures on this trip exist because by the time we got back I was too sore to lift the camera) and got ice cream and hopped into the hot tub for a while and then went out for a pub dinner and then crawled into bed at eight o’clock and talked about boys with Alice for a while before Pete and Andy came in and and Pete said, “You know what’s great about tomorrow? We don’t have to climb a mountain!” but we didn’t even hear him because we were already asleep.

And then in the morning we were all very sore and had a difficult time walking the five metres to the car and sitting down again but I didn’t care because I was happy to have had a bit of an adventure and do something with friends I probably wouldn’t have done on my own, and because it was a beautiful day and because even though I am not very fit I can still occasionally climb mountains. And because I was glad to get away for a a weekend but also glad to come back home—and because it still is home: still, for a few more weeks, still still still home.