Tongariro Crossing Part 1: Bunk Beds/Beginnings

The Tongariro Crossing is a 19.4km (12mile) hike across Mount Tongariro, past Mount Ngauruhoe and Mount Ruapehu (all of which are volcanos). It includes hikes through craters, over mountain ridges, and through native bush, as well as views of the Red Crater, the Emerald Lakes, and the Blue Lake. It is rated the number one attraction in New Zealand, and has been rated the number one day hike in the world. It is conveniently located just two hours from Whanganui.

Needless to say, I wasn't in NZ long before I decided that I needed to do this hike. Many people told me how beautiful it was, and that although it is a lot of work (19.4km up and down a mountain is nothing to scoff at), it is completely worth it. I therefore planned to do it when Dad was here, with my friends Lionel and Anna. Unfortunately, there was a huge tropical storm on the day we were going to do it, so we had to cancel. 

Now, with Patty here, and Kirsten eager to come, I tried again, with much better results. Patty and I drove over to Whanganui on Thursday, picked up Kirsten, and we drove to the mountains. 

When we got close, we saw this view, at which point I pulled the car over and Patty and I jumped out of the car to take pictures. Kirsten, surprised by this reaction, said, "It's only Ngauruhoe!" After much incredulity and mockery on my part for such an unenthusiastic response to what is, in fact, a beautiful mountain, Kirsten admitted that she does like Ngauruhoe, but she's just grown up with it so it's not as exciting, and besides, she likes Ruapehu better. 

(Ngauruhoe is the conical mountain to the right, which Tongariro is the flatter one to the left. Ruapehu is the biggest one, and the only one that currently has snow on it, but it was hidden behind the clouds at this particular moment, so Kirsten was out of luck.)

Also, notice the menacingly dark clouds at the top of the picture, which were awesome-looking but a bit worrying. They must have been blowing away, though, because it turned into a fairly clear night.

We stayed in this tiny little cabin the night before the hike. And when I say tiny, please notice that it is actually about the same size as that harakeke (flax) plant next to it. But it had exactly what we needed, which was a comfortable place to sleep before our big day, and a shared kitchen down the road for a healthy breakfast before we set out.

We walk into our little cabin and Kirsten yells, "YAY! BUNK BEDS!" As she is climbing up and sprawling on the top bunk, I am in the midst of both deep indignation and hysterical laughter that while the volcano down the road inspires a placid shrug, the bunk beds produce exclamations of delight. Kirsten graciously surrendered to the understanding that she is never going to live this down.

After enjoying a rest in the bunk beds, we headed to the Chateau Tongariro for a lovely dinner at the Pihanga Cafe. I was particularly excited about that, because Pihanga is the beautiful girl mountain that all the boy mountains want to marry in the Māori legend, so I felt very special to be eating in her cafe.

Before we ate, we wandered around the Chateau a bit, and I loved this pretty window with a view up towards the mountains!

There was a guy playing this beautiful piano, and Kirsten went to tell him how amazing his playing was, and he offered to let her play it! She is a fabulous pianist, and it was so cool to hear her play in such a fancy place!

We went to bed fairly early, because we needed to get up at 4:15am to have a healthy breakfast and be suitably awake before catching the shuttle to the hike at 5:30am. Discovery Lodge drops you off really early (or there are later options) so that you can take your time and enjoy the whole day of hiking, before taking the shuttle back. This is a particularly helpful service, because you end up 19.4km away from where you started, so you'd have to take two cars all the way up into National Park in order to do it yourself without the shuttle. 

When we started our hike at 5:55am, it was still pretty dark, but it lightened up quite quickly. It was overcast, but the shuttle driver said that it usually starts out that way, and then the clouds burn off later, so we weren't too worried. Plus, the misty clouds gave the first part of our walk great atmosphere!

Sometimes the trail through Mangatepopo Valley was a walkway like the first picture, and sometimes it was more natural, like the stone steps in this picture.

This is Ngauruhoe behind the clouds. The one strip of clouds across the middle looked the same colour as the sky behind the mountain, and sometimes it really looked like there was a strip missing from the middle of the mountain!

Kirsten and I towards the top of the first long and rather difficult uphill trek. Yay, us! (Patty took the picture, but don't worry, she made it to the top, too).

As the sun started to burst through the clouds, we got to see these stunning splashes of golden sunlight across the Mangatepopo Valley, which we'd just hiked through.

I will end this post here for now, as there is much too much to the Tongariro Crossing to be crammed into one post. At this point we'd done about 2 hours of what turned out to be 8 hours of hiking, so there is still lots more to come.