The Tongariro Crossing
To start this post, let’s wind the clock back to 2018. We know the time is starting to blur together since it’s taken us over a year and a half to talk about our 2020 adventure, but 2018 was actually our first trip to New Zealand (well, actually Stefan’s third; his first two times were while studying abroad in Australia back in 2011). That had been a family vacation organized to celebrate the 70th birthday of Stefan’s dad, who had always wanted to visit. It was actually heading to the airport back from this trip that we first heard about the Working Holiday Visa which we eventually took advantage of for our 2020 year.
That 2018 trip was taken over winter vacation, and the intended highlight was to be an 8-hour Christmas Day hike over the Tongariro Crossing. This 12-mile alpine hike in the shadow of Mt. Ngauruhoe–famously Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings–is considered the best day-hike in all of New Zealand and supposedly one of the top ten in the world.
Unfortunately, bad weather rolled in over the mountain that morning and the hike had to be called off for safety reasons, much to the disappointment of everyone (except perhaps Stefan’s mom, who expressed relief at not having to do the grueling trek–which is of course nonsense, since in her retirement she has done multiple world-famous, multi-day hikes in exotic places like Peru and Nepal!). The audible called for that day instead saw us attend a church service entirely in Maori and get a cultural tour from a local, which was interesting, but not the once-in-a-lifetime memory we had been gearing up for. Our lifelong memory instead came in the form of a truly horrific Christmas cake with frosting the consistency of cardboard…we forgot to take a photo, but that image (and taste) is definitely seared into our memories!
Fast-forwarding to 2020, doing the Tongariro Crossing was one of the big items we wanted to check off the list. We initially planned on doing it after our third HelpX in Clevedon, but decided to put that on hold when we realized we should be exploring the colder South Island in the summertime. Not long after that, COVID really threw a wrench into our plans, and it looked like it might have been off the table altogether. With luck, however, the situation blew over fairly quickly in our secluded corner of the world and we were left exploring all the tourist sites with none of the tourists. At that point, we turned our sights back onto planning the Crossing.
While you can do the hike on your own, we figured since we were hiking in winter that it would be a good idea to have an experienced guide–we can both manage to get by in normal conditions, but with snow and cold weather, we didn’t want to end up on the news as the stupid Americans found frozen on the mountainside. So we decided to book a guided tour with a group.
We picked out a date early on, around the time we were in the Milford Sound area. Stefan remembers this because he figured the Tongariro Crossing would be a good proposal spot, although he feared Dagmar would smell it coming so wanted to keep it for a last resort. In retrospect, this was a good choice, as proposing in the middle of a bunch of strangers in their tour group would hardly have been romantic!
After booking our late-June date, we timed the rest of our South Island circuit to get us there on time. While we were in New Plymouth, however, Dagmar got a message that it had snowed on the mountain so the outing would be delayed by a week or so. But we weren’t about to miss this opportunity for a third time! So we juggled some lodging reservations and stayed a bit longer in the New Plymouth area + in our ultra nice recuperation AirBnB BEFORE the hike rather than afterwards. The night before the hike, we did the short drive over to the creatively named National Park Village to stay in a hostel about 20 minutes from the trailhead.
On the way, we stopped to gather some food for the next day as well as a nice Merino Wool hat for Stefan–a hat which, despite having come from a gas station, turned out to be an excellent buy and has survived much longer than the socks he got in Taupō!
We got settled into the hostel just as night was falling, and we were a little surprised that we hadn’t yet received confirmation on our pick-up time. Dagmar decided to call the company just to make sure everything was still following the email she had received a few weeks back, only to find an absolute shock: the company thought we weren’t coming and the group was full! Apparently, there was a miscommunication where we hadn’t automatically been rebooked after the original delay. The company then assumed we were no longer interested, and gave our spots to somebody else.
This of course caused us quite a panic: no way were we going to get roadblocked at the last minute after two years and multiple attempts to make this happen! With businesses starting to close at the end of the day, Dagmar went into overdrive, making phone calls and sending emails to everyone in town trying to get a spot for us on a tour the next morning. Stefan never could have done this: he takes about 40 minutes to write an email (you might have guessed this from how far behind this blog is…) and approaches every phone call like he’s dealing with the Cuban Missle Crisis. Fortunately, Dagmar is an absolute pro at this, thanks in no small part to her years spent leading St. Louis’ youth tennis program and all the hundreds of phone calls with crabby parents that involved. Things were looking pretty grim, as we were well inside the 24-hour reservation cutoff and people were leaving their offices, but fortunately one company finally took pity on us and agreed to take the two of us on despite already having a full group.
The next morning, we were all set to catch the bus with the sunrise!
Given our previous luck, we were hesitant to breathe a sigh of relief until the bus rolled up, but we found another couple hostel-stayers waiting for the same ride, and soon enough we were bussing our way towards the mountain!
We both packed exceptionally light, knowing we had a very long hike ahead of us. As we bussed over, however, we were quickly loaded down with backpacks, crampons, ice axes, helmets, and all other odds and ends. To some extent, we were lucky; our last-minute booking had meant we missed the previous day’s equipment-fitting session, and we were fortunate that everything fit–including Stefan’s boots which he needed to rent, since he didn’t have a snow-appropriate pair himself. The one element Stefan wasn’t so lucky on was his sunglasses; he hadn’t considered that some would be necessary for the snow, and the only pair that fit over his own glasses guaranteed he wouldn’t be looking cool in any photos that day.
We stumbled out of the bus still adjusting straps and tying our shoes, and the quick speech our guide gave prior to starting the hike naturally took all of 30 seconds rather than the 5 minutes we’d hoped for. The rest of the group tore off and we were instantly at the very back of the pack! Despite our hustling, we at least had the presence of mind to snap a quick photo at the trailhead.
And we were off! The first hour or two were relatively flat as we slowly approached the foot of the mountain pass. We spent most of this section all the way in the back, chatting with one of the guides who was friendly but obviously there to make sure we didn’t get completely left in the snowy dust. This section was mostly in the shade as the sun rose, but it left the mountain itself in sunny view on the clear day. We unfortunately quickly realized we didn’t know how to adjust the settings on our camera to avoid getting whited out on video mode (something you’ll notice in our video at the end of this post), but at least the photos turned out alright!
After this section, the group accordioned back together at a bridge where we were told to put on our helmets and to use the portapotty, as this would be the last restroom available for 4+ hours (during winter time, several of the already limited number are shut down). At this point, we started the “Devil’s Staircase,” where we quickly gained a lot of altitude. The slow pace meant we had more of an opportunity to chat with other members on our tour group, including an American girl who had been studying abroad in Southeast Asia when COVID began and who decided to take refuge in New Zealand rather than go back to stay cooped up inside her house in the US. Another girl we met was staying at our hostel and financing her stay in the country by being a nanny.
After about an hour conquering the steepest portion of the hike, we took a bit of a rest and received a crash course on how to perform an arrest with our ice axes. Both of us were too busy practicing this ‘fall on your axe and hope you don’t go slipping too far down the mountain’ technique to document how ridiculous we surely both looked, but we did manage to grab a few photos of the flat stretch right at the base of Mt. Ngauruhoe.
The next stage saw us prepping for another steep uphill climb by attaching our crampons (little metal cleats which help give traction in icy areas). As we hiked up, it was around this time where Dagmar’s boots started to give out; despite having faithfully served her all throughout multiple national parks inside the US and the incredibly wet Rakiura Track, they finally sprung a leak on this hike. With every step sinking our feet into cold snow, this was hardly an ideal time; due to the conditions being very sunny and not terribly windy, the weather overall was fairly comfortable despite the cold, but Dagmar’s feet–always the first to freeze in cold weather anyway–quickly got wet and miserable with melted snow. Even so, Dagmar valiantly soldiered on and was admirably stoic for the rest of the day. Those boots eventually met their final demise over a year later when they were presented to our puppy, Rowi, for execution.
When we finally reached the top of that steep climb, we were treated to absolutely breathtaking views of the other side of the mountain. Particularly noteworthy were the acidic Blue Lake as well as the geothermal steam rising from melted patches along the ground–Mt. Ngauruhoe is, after all, still an active volcano! We stopped on one of these warm patches to really soak in the view while having our lunch. It was surprisingly warm sitting on that patch, and the guide said you could easily sleep overnight without shelter.
After recuperating our strength and soaking in the views, we started the long descent down the other side of the mountain. This first took us past the lake over another long, straight stretch.
Next, there were some rockier downhill sections as the snow started to clear out.
It was at this point of the hike that we probably had the best views, looking out over rising steam vents and the landscape beyond.
Most of the afternoon was spent hiking down, down, down. We neglected to get any photos, but at one point we stopped by a hut which had recently been caved in by a boulder thrown out by a mini burst from the volcano (there’s probably a more technical term for that, but we don’t remember!). One of the guides also claimed that he had done this trek for so many years, he calculated he had walked to the Moon and back. At an average distance of 382,500 kilometers to the Moon and with the Tongariro Crossing being 19.4, the guide must have been doing it every single day for the past 54 years! We’re skeptical. We did, however have the Moon out in full view as we thought about that claim!
The downhill portion of the hike took the lion’s share of the day–probably good that we had done the exciting uphill portion first while we were fresh, and saved the longer, flatter section for the failing light and sunset.
We finished about the last hour of the hike after the sun went down. The final stretch was through some woods at the base of the mountain, and by that point it was dark and hard to see the trail. Our feet were definitely hurting and we were pretty zonked by then. Despite all the gorgeous views we had enjoyed earlier in the day, 8+ hours of hiking and made us very ready to be off our feet! We did, however, manage to drag ourselves to the bus waiting for us at the carpark.
Dead tired, we were glad to snooze a bit on the way home. When we got back to our hostel, we took a quick shower and went to eat at the restaurant next door with some of the people we had met on the hike. We’re fairly sure we had some fish and chips (per our post-hike ritual ever since the Rakiura Track) and sticky date pudding, but to be honest, we were running on fumes at that point in the evening so it’s a pretty big blur!
We definitely crashed hard after that, feeling accomplished in finally having completed the hike we had been hoping for two years to do! Overall, we were happy to have done it in the wintertime–dealing with the ice axes and cold feet probably made it a lot more difficult, but it added a unique aspect which set it apart from other hikes we’ve done. While length + spectacular views can be found everywhere (even more so in New Zealand!), it’s the special features that make hikes stand out: thigh-deep water in Zion’s Narrows, a windy ridgeline in complete isolation at Hawaii’s Mau’umae trail, or scrabbling down boulders in a canyon which empties out into a gorgeous beach at the Torrent de Pareis in Mallorca make those hikes so much more memorable. So ultimately, we will probably remember the Tongariro Crossing for its technical “challenges,” even though the views were spectacular.
We do wonder what it would have been like to do it with our tour group back in 2018. We imagine people would have gotten a lot more cranky since it was such a grueling hike (those last 1-2 hours on the runout at the bottom took FOREVER!). On the other hand, summertime would have meant we weren’t racing to beat the sunset, so a more relaxed pace might have helped with the feet as well.
Those with more time might want to consider the Tongariro Northern Circuit, one of New Zealand’s 9 Great Walks which spends 3-4 days on a longer route of the area, but each day covering a shorter distance. The Crossing was probably the longest hike either of us has ever done in one day, so we struggled to stay on our feet that long and might have enjoyed the opportunity to spread it out over a couple of days! Either way, however, this was absolutely one of the highlights of our year in New Zealand and we are so grateful, not only for being able to make it happen, but for having such gorgeous conditions to make better photos and memories! Even if some of the former ended up pretty washed out due to the snow…
It may be a bit until we get our next post up, but it will likely cover our route north through Rotorua and the center of the island to reach the coastal city of Tauranga and the peninsula called the Coromandel. At this point, Stefan’s clock to return to the US and start his job at the University of Denver was ticking, so we entered our final month together with a whole list of places we still wanted to visit. As you’ll soon see, we managed to squeeze in an awful lot–even despite constant change-ups in our travel plans–and some of our favorite sights are yet to come!
Leave a comment and please come back again in a couple of weeks when we’ll hope to have the next post up 🙂