The Tongariro Crossing

When Sam holidayed (without me) in New Zealand about 4 years ago she returned with stories and pictures about the beauty of this small country (pre-blog days). One particular photo stayed imprinted on my Swiss cheese like memory, three blue lakes set within a volcanic landscape. Could we return there so I could see for myself one of the wonders of NZ? A resounding Yes from Samantha, I'll show you the famous Emerald Lakes of Tongariro and show them to me she did.....just about.
The Tongariro Crossing is a well known walk within NZ and is supposed to be the best one day walk you can do here. The scenery is fairly spectacular taking in two inactive volcano's, Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe, numerous lakes, waterfalls and many other types of landscape. The walk is an hour or two's drive from Lake Taupo, the biggest lake in NZ smack bang in the middle of the North island.
The day before the walk we checked in with the local Information center to find out the weather reports and to book up some transport to ferry us back to our van after the walk had finished. The weather read: 'fine with some cloudy spells', excellent, at last some decent weather and so we went ahead and booked the shuttle service. We then drove to a little village called Whakapapa (you pronounce the Wha as Fu - I'm not kidding) where we camped for the night in a weird, kinda scary campervan site that could have easily been used as a set for a horror film.
The next day saw us up bright and breezy and on our way to the rendez-vous with the shuttle. The idea is that you park your van at the end of the walk and they drive you to the start, some 17 kilometers away. Only one slight problem, we couldn't find the rendez-vous! No where in sight was the stupid road we were supposed to turn off to meet up with our ride. After a lot of driving up and down and cursing the transport company, we found ourselves fifteen minutes late and realising that they would have left without us, we decided to drive to the start of the walk, walk to the Emerald Lakes which was about half the walk anyway and then come back the same route. $40 dollars (15 knicker) down wasn't the best start to the day (we'd paid for the transport already), but the sun was peering at us from behind the clouds occasionally and we were in the mood for walking.
Arriving at a small carpark in an area called Mangatepopo, we grabbed our packs and set off along the well trodden route with a lot of other walkers. The first part of the walk is all fairly flat and takes you through scrubland down to the end of a valley where you start to ascend. On one side of you are steep scrub covered hills and on the other the imposing figure of Mt Ngauruhoe, reaching up to 2,291 meters high. It also happens to be the mountain that Peter Jackson used to represent Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings films, cool eh :) The weather was fairly cloudy during this part of the walk and at one point the clouds actually parted and I managed to get a picture of the mountain with a nice blue sky. Our optimism of a sunny day was short lived however as the clouds closed once again and jumpers and jackets that had been taken off were hastily put back on again. In fact this seems to be a recurring theme in NZ, one minute you're basking in the sunshine, the next your scrabbling for your jumper as the cold winds begin to bite. The next part of the walk is all uphill and is pretty hard going, there's no real path, so its clambering up and around and inbetween the rocks and tough grass that litter the mountain side. As we were climbing up the weather started to close in little by little, the mist and clouds descending upon us. The volcanic rocks around us looked exactly like the terrain that Frodo and Sam cross when they're in Mordor and on further investigation this turned out to actually be the place where they filmed it. It's a pretty bleak place as you're trudging up the steep slope, the clouds had by now returned in force and completely obscured Mt Doom to our right. It took us about an hour to get to the top, which I thought was fairly good going considering the weather, the terrain and Hambles little legs. At the top the mist was now everywhere, you could see 10-20 meters around you, but we strode on across the flat sand banks, onwards towards the ever closer Emerald Lakes. After ten minutes we came to the next and last ascent before we reached our goal. This one lasted maybe half an hour and was just as steep as the last one, but this time the weather had really closed in on us, it started raining a fine mist, so that our trousers were wet very quickly, the wind really started getting stronger, not quite enough to blow you over, but pretty strong. We walked heads down, the wind raging around us, our legs aching from the exertion of the climb. Our jackets protected our top halves from the ravages of the weather, Gore-tex, blessed be thy name. We hunkered down behind a big rock away from the worst of the wind and ate some of the sandwiches we'd made earlier and got chatting to a chap called Elliott from Singapore. Its great to meet someone nice to talk to when you're facing testing conditions, it gives you a lift and spurs you on. We finally reached the top of the climb and straight away began the descent to the lakes. The wind was still whipping around us as we slipped and slid down the scree. Half walking, half sliding, we went down sideways to make sure we didn't fall over. I became aware of a smell, a rotten eggs type smell, which caused me to turn around and glare at Sam, but she was further up the slope, so couldn't have been guilty. Where could that heinous smell be coming from? Then in the distance, ooh, at least 20 meters away I could make out the vaguest hint of blue, was it the fabled Emerald Lakes of Samantha's legends. Yes! We'd arrived at the lakes! As we got within a few meters I could see the lakes clearly (ish) through the cloud. Two lakes, one smaller, both a radiant emerald blue colour, a thin strip of sulphurous yellow around their edges. The egg smell was all around us and was coming from steaming vents of gas on the other side of the lake, the volcano still bubbling away far below us. We sat down behind another rock next to the lake and took out our newly acquired thermoses ( thermoi?) and were excited to discover that they had actually worked and kept our water hot and proceeded to have our warming Pea and Ham soup. After eating the remainder of our sandwiches, polishing off a spot of Green tea, we started to make the long trek back to our van. The return ascent of the scree covered slope was a bit of a mare, but the thought of it being our last climb of the day drove us on. We met walkers here and there, appearing out of the mist, asking if there was far to go to the lakes. The rest of the journey back was uneventful and gradually the weather slackened off a bit and allowed us to get a bit of a view of the 'red crater', one of the highlights of the walk normally.
Total walk time including stoppages was seven hours, not to bad considering the weather, steep sections and our generally poor fitness. I got to "see" the lakes in the end and it was an enjoyable experience, but I would like to return one day and do the walk in good weather, the views are normally amazing, here's what it should look like!

Next up: Some sun?




Listening to: Plaid - Rest Proof Clockwork





Film of the Week: Borat