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Tongariro Crossing

I was just thinking to myself last week how mild the NZ winter is actually turning out to be - sunny days, blue skies and mild temperatures - short sleeves a lot of the time. Little did we think that completing the 17 km Tongariro Crossing would require 2 layers of thermals, a fleece, windproof jacket, overtrousers, crampons and an ice-axe! And boy did we need it!

The TC is one of the most popular 1-day hikes in the country, up to 1000 people complete it every day during the summer. Its part of a National park - volcanic scenery mostly with emerald blue lakes and a couple of enormous volcanos - one of which was made famous on LOTR, Mt Doom would you believe! However when we did it, it was covered in a thick layer of snow and ice which made for really difficult but fun walking. We actually had to go with a guide since the track was snowed over a lot of the time. There were some steep sections that without the crampons, we would have been sliding back to the start on our wet arses! The ice-axe was mostly for safety in case we did go hurtling down a slope, but it doubled as a hand-brake on a steep section that we *had* to slide down! Great fun!

We were lucky with the weather, the day we chose had bright blue skies, but when we got to the summit the wind nearly cut us in two. We had to be really carefull with our footing as the terrain was icy snow with a huge dropoff into the volcano crater. That would have been a really interesting climb out .... The walk in total took about 8 exhausting hours, but the scenery was absolutely amazing, covering everything from volcanic (I swear I could have been on the moon), snow, ice, bush and forest. We finally made it back to the bus at 5ish, absolutely cream crackered. We hobbled to a 'common as muck' hot spa that night to soothe our aching feet -so bloody cheap here, 3.50 euro for a private spa pool with steaming hot mineral waters, aaaahhh.

Until Wellington or somewhere on the way,

Cheerio,

Am

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