The Tongariro Alpine Crossing was the second great walk Mary and I hiked. We rented a big house in Ohakune with a wonderful group of 12. We headed up north Friday in the afternoon, did a little hike on Saturday, the crossing on Sunday and where back in Wellington Sunday night. Check out the picture of the warm up hike and the crossing below.
Originally we planed to hike the the crossing on Saturday, but due to the bad wether we changed plans and stayed in the house for the morning. After the rain we wanted to explore the wild and found a cool little loop to a waterfall. Except, we didn’t do the loop, and had to walk all the way back to the parking lot on the street.
Tongariro is New Zealand’s oldest national park and the volcanic landscapes are impressive. The crossing itself takes around 5 hrs and is part of the multi day Tongariro Circuit. To do the hike, transportation in and out of the park is needed. We got dropped of around 7 am at the beginning of the track and took the last bus at 5 pm on the other side. The weather couldn’t have been better, as you can see in the pictures.
Additionally to the crossing, we climbed the summit of of the vulcan Ngauruhoe, which took us an additional 3 hrs up and down on volcanic rock and gravel. Partly very painful, but absolutely worth it! Completing the full thing took us around 9 hrs, which means we had to run the last bit to make the last bus out of the park…
