Tongariro Crossing - Taupo

After much talks about Tongariro Crossing being the best one day hike in New Zealand, I had a chance to experience it myself.

Gin and I did some research about doing the Tongariro Crossing and found out that it was a full day hike about 8 hours long. They also said it was a challenging hike, especially around this time of the year when the mountains are covered in snow. So we decided that I will go do the hike and Gin will spend the day in a spa. Unfortunately, beacause of severe wind and bad weather they had canceled all hikes on the mountain for Saturday, August 9th. Sunday was subject to good weather, so we waited until Saturday 2pm and found out that the crossing was open for Sunday August 10th. We booked the hike with Alpine Crossing because you need mountain climbing equipment during winter. I was nervous and excited about the hike.

Jared from Alpine crossing came to pick me up at 6:20am and I almost missed the pickup. After getting on the bus with rest of the crazy people wanting to do the same, we drove towards the town of Turangi before reaching the base camp at the Tongariro Crossing. We were given specific instructions to layer up with clothing as it got extremely cold at about 2000 meters (about 6600 feet high). We also had to bring our own food and water. They did provide us with a guide, crampons (kinda like the shoes soccer players wear with nails in the bottom to dig into ice) and walking stick. Our guides were Sarah and Caroline. Sarah lead the group (25 people) in the front and Caroline stayed in the back.

We started the track with an easy hour walk to the base of the mountain. This was where I saw the beautiful snow covered mountain Mt. Ngauruahoe (Mt. Doom from Lord of The Rings). It was a beautiful view with Mt. Ruapehu, Mt. Ngauruhoe, and Mt. Tongariro covered entirely in snow. Mt. Ngauruhoe is the tallest of the three mountains.

About another hour into the walk, we were required to put the crampons on because the snow was now becoming ice. This was my first time putting the crampons on and I did a terrible job putting them on. Caroline had to stop me along the track and redo my crampons. Thanks to her, otherwise it could have gotten ugly when we were climbing some of the hardest part of the track.

I took so many beautiful pictures of this majestic place that I had to literally keep the camera out almost the entire track. I am glad I did that, but unfortunately, it's impossible the capture the real thing. The pictures don't do justice to how incredible the views were. It was like a desert, except the sand had been replaced with snow. The wind was so strong that it was blowing snow across like sand in desert. It was bone chilling cold with real bad wind chill. The moisture in the air had been converted into ice on the poles where there were markers on the track.

Finally, we reached the summit after about 4 hours. At this point, we were inside the clouds and the visibility was poor. At 2000 meters, on top of the summit, there was barely any snow. Because of the mountain being an active volcano, the top of the mountain there was no snow. Infact, I sat on the ground and it felt like a heated car seat except the seat was at 2000 meters on top of Mt. Tongariro where everything was covered in snow except the top.

It was so cold and so much snow that the emerald lakes were entirely covered in snow. So we couldn't see the emerald lakes from the summit of the Mt. Tongariro.

We started heading back down a few meters before we decided to have lunch. I was starving. I didn't care how cold the sandwich was, it tasted good. At this point we had another 4 hours to go around the mountain and down the mountain.

As we were heading up towards the north face of the mountain, I had a very bad cramp in my upper right thigh. Since I was too busy taking pictures I didn't realize that I was the only one left all the way back and the entire group was beyond my sight. I could barely up the mountain as the cramp got worse. As I was struggling to go up the mountain, another guy who was taking so picutres saw me limping and volunteered some help. He grabbed the front of the walking stick and I grabbed the back of the walking stick as she pulled me up the mountain. I was a little scared and embarrased about the cramp, but after a few meters my cramp was gone. I felt very relieved as I stretched my leg to make sure I didn't feel the cramp anymore.

The north face of the mountain was quite challenging because we were walking on a steep slope. Walking sideways on a steep mountain with crampons wasn't an easy task. The was no margin of error. Sarah made sure that we went extremely slow through this part of the mountain.

Once we went around the mountain, we had an option of either walking down the mountain or sliding down the mountain. I chose to slide down the mountain. It was awesome. It was like sledging with the sledge. I slid to about half way down and then I had to walk the rest of the way down. The views from this point were incredible.

After 7 hours, we reached the end of the crossing. We were back to no snow land. We still had another hour and half walk down the jungle and back to the other side of the mountain where our bus was waiting to pick us up. Nice cold drinks were waiting for us at the end.

I was so exhausted at the end, but the adrenaline was still pumping through my veins. I thought that I could do the entire track again. I realize now why mountain climbers say that you have to respect the mountain because the conditions on these mountains can get worse any moment and you have to be prepared to face the worst. Luckily, the mountain was good to us that day and it was a beautiful clear sky which allowed me to take some incredible pictures. This was my first snow mountain climbing experience and it was one incredible experience.