Barry
and Jodie's Kiwi AdventureBarry
and Jodie's Kiwi Adventure
The Tongariro Crossing is billed as "the best one-day walk in New Zealand." It follows a well-maintained 17km track past two of the park's volcanoes. It scales high ridges, summitting at 1886 meters/6,200 feet at the highest point, skirts beautiful mineral pools and craters, and crosses desolate moonscape crater floors.
Tongariro National Park was the first NZ national park, and only the fourth such park in the world. It encompasses an area that was sacred to the Maori inhabitants. Its peaks and lakes figured in the local iwi's creation myths. When Pakeha arrived the Maori kept them out of the area for many years, allowing them only to go a short way up Mt. Ruahepu's flanks. The first Pakeha summitting of Mt. Ngauruhoe wasn't until 1839, Mt. Ruahepu in 1851, and the first Pakeha to summit Ruahepu and see Crater Lake didn't do so until 1879.
The area was subject to conflicting ownership claims by different Maori iwi. The Northern Wars further upset the balance of power among the Maori and led to confrontations over stewardship of the area. Seeing the pressure from both Maori and Pakeha, one Maori chief Horonuku Te Heuheu whose iwi claimed the land saw only one opportunity to keep the land intact and safe from settlement and subdivision . In 1887 Chief Horonuku presented the area to the Crown with the condition it be established and maintained as a national park.
Many people do the whole crossing in one day. They're shuttled to the start and meet a bus at the other end to return to the town of Turangi. It's become perhaps the most popular tramp in the country. DOC estimates that 25,000 people complete the track annually, and as many as 1,000 trampers can be on the trail at any one time during the high seasons during school holidays.
We took two days to complete the track, overnighting at Ketetahi Hut, about 2/3 of the way to the end. It was strenuous, with pitches comparable to the toughest we did in the South Island. But the weather was more congenial -- dry, though windy and at elevation quite chilly. We were constantly shedding and adding layers as the height and pitch of the track and the level of cloud cover varied. I've prepared an annotated photo gallery of the trek that you can view separately and that I hope you'll enjoy.
We finished on Sunday, bone tired. Our friends had to get back to Auckland that evening. But we stayed another night at the fishing lodge. One of its nicest features was an on-site thermal spring fed from underground sources heated by the remaining volcanic energy in the area. On Friday night this had been a pleasant indulgence. On Sunday night it seemed like a necessity. We soaked for some time in fresh, hot water with a slightly sulfurous scent as evening fell.