The Tongariro Crossing

Caves - Turangi - Tongariro - Campground

Having finished our caving journey at Waitomo, we gave a ride to a couple girls from Vancouver that had also been in our tour. We also had a super good chat with our guide. He was from NZ, and had been leading outdoor expedition type things sincd high school as his career after a diploma at a tech school on outdoor expeditions or something. I'm pretty sure it's what I need to go into. He's leaving soon to lead expeditions up Mount Fuji, and has done lots of rafting and kayaking jobs before. He usually hitches to and from work, so we gave him a ride home.

After 2 very tiring hours driving in the dark, we made it to a free campsite/parking lot near Turangi and got our cooking gear out while closeby neighbours slept in their fancy, hitop, luxury campervans.

The next morning we were greeted by black swans on the water off the wharf. If only my black coffee were as pleasent as they were. That day, the coffee was too much and I dumped it out after 5 sips.

First Falls we walked to for Church

We drove into Turangi Sunday morning playing 'who can find the best church' (ok not actually best, just something similar to what we believe & practice). We were looking for something similar to a Church of Christ & somewhere that was having communion since that's important to us. We eventually found a multi-denominational church, (methodist, protestant & anglican) that we knew was having communion (& a tea afterwards too! Bonus). Niether one of us could remember exactly what each of these denominations believed or practiced and we didnt want to use up all our data googling each of them so we went the old fashioned route & decided to find out by trying it. Once we got inside we made up our minds. Maybe leaving was the wrong thing to do, we werent quite sure, but we just didn't feel comfortable with some of the things they were doing and felt much better about the idea of having church on our own. I guess it wasn't worth the free tea afterwards after all..

Communion

Our hike map for the 2 days

So we had a good laugh about that and headed to the grocery store. We decided rather than be true church hoppers, & trying the next church we'd have a little church thing together down by the waterfalls we were going to hike to on the way to Wakapapa village. This made for a pretty neat church service on a little steam at the base of these small falls only a 10 minute hike from our car. So with our fizzy grape juice and whole wheat crackers we did our own little thing until a young couple with a baby came and I had nightmares about how brutal it could be to travel with a kid!

Taranaki Falls

We then drove into Wakapapa village and from there did a 1 hour 45 minute hike to Taranaki Falls. We were told there were several scenes from LOTR filmed at this hike, but we don't know which. These falls were incredible as well. The water was shooting out from a huge cliff into a nice basin at the bottom. With a 10 second timer on the camera, we set it up and then got a picture from in front of the falls of us underneath them. But 10 seconds is not enough to sprint over a bunch of wet rocks. When a couple from France offered to take our picture after laughing at our timer-sprint attempt it turned out much nicer.

Upon returning to our van slightly tired, we wondered how exhausting a 7 hour hike up a volcano would be as this was our plan for the next day!

Volcanic Rock by the path

One of our plans before even coming to NZ was to hike the Tongariro Crossing (or Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings) and today was the day. After sleeping from 830-430, we woke up before dawn to get to the shuttle that would take us to our hiking trail. It was a 19 km hike one way and we wanted to start nice and early! We had my big pack with all the food, snacks, 3L of water, med bag, etc which ended up weighing about 20 lbs (fruit, PB, and water are heavy!) and Milessa had a smaller bag with some water and some snacks. The hike started out beautiful. Nice weather, not to steep, you know, perfect hiking weather. Every one at the start was pretty quiet either because they were nervous or it was real early.

Lots of steep climbing

Eventually we took off in our pairs and I did everything I could to not make it a competition with the random people who started before us! As you begin, you go into a valley with volcanic rock everywhere and its easy to focus on the beautiful scenery. After 1.5 hours, we hit the first checkpoint toilet area and the rain started. We didn't know it then, but we wouldn't be dry agajn for 6 hours. A huge section of stairs began and we got tired pretty quick, but the stairs never ended. After going up and up for a while, we'd look up and see people far ahead & far above us in the distance. It was quite discouraging. After going up for a very long time, we came to a huge desert-plateau area with lots of crosswind and rain. Our hands started freezing as it was around zero. After more stairs and some cliffs we walked by, our jackets started soaking through and it was feeling like a real battle. Soon the waterproof hiking shoes soaked through and there was no dry part on us. About 9 km in, we had a choice to get to the Tongariro summit (Mount Doom) or begin the 10 towards our warm dry van. No one else was going to the summit because the visibility was less than 75 meters and it was freezing, windy, and rainy. But we decided another 1.5 hours added on was worth it to say we hiked Mount Doom! After years of maintaining Frodo was a big whiner, I take it back. I had that whiny grosse face on for ahout 5 hours this day. We're pretty sure we made it to the summit, because there were no more markers in site. It would have been easy to get lost because of how foggy it was!

Crazy enough to do the extra distance

Back on the regular trail, we felt slightly energized, for about 5 minutes until we had more uphill to do. Later on, while the miserable cold continued, there was a large group of people chatting and eating and laughing by a lake in a crater. Being rather depressed at this point, Milessa wanted to visit where they were because "it looks happy there! They look happy!". Turns out we were a bit sheltered by the wind there but not much. They were misleading us with their laughter as to how nice it was.

Weird flat area near the top of the crossing

The next 3 hours were mostly downhill (literally) and our knees and ankles started feeling it. We were very motivated to be done and cruised passed many people on the way. The scenery also had many cool changes from volcanic to dessert to shrubs to field to thick forest/jungle.

Completed

By the end of the 22 km of Tongariro Crossing, we were beat. I dont think anyone else was stupid enough to do the extra 3 km to the summit, and we coukdnt blame them. 7.5 hours later, it was possibly the hardest challenge I'd ever had. Physically and mentally. Because unlike a 20 mile run, there was no stopping. Once you were up the mountain, you had to get down yourself, you couldn't just give up. Then there was the endless stairs. On a nice day it would have been tough but not terrible. But today, we were soaking through every layer, hands weren't working, sopping feet, freezing everywhere. It was almost unbearable! But so much fun, and so worth it! It was such a great challenge, and we climbed Mount Doom! Milessa is still not quite at the happy memory stage that I'm at, hopefully she'll come around!

Post wet day stay warm fashion

After completing the crossing we headed out to find a campsite for the night. After a few failed attempts at free campsites that sad they had washrooms but didn't actually we ended up paying for one just outside of Palmerston North. We spent the next day doing some much needed laundry washing & getting dried off. So many of our clothes were wet from the hike that the next morning when it was chilly outside we both had to put on all our remaining clothes to stay warm, which made for quite the fashion statment. Luckily it warmed up outside so we didn't have to dress like this for too long. After a very challenging hike & a good day of drying off we were ready to head to Wellington for the remainder of the week.

Us - at the start, the middle & the end

Made it to the top of Mount Doom

It's your hair salon Karina in Palmerston North!