The Tongariro Crossing (aka Tongue-Out Crossing/Up the Ant Hill we go)

Tuesday, Feb. 15th.

Mt. Ngauruhoe (last eruption 1975)

Crossing the South Crater

Crossing distance: 19.4km
Additional roundtrip hike to the Mt Tongariro summit: 3km
Difficulty: Stiff climb up, and up, and up, and then non stop down, down, down. Only a couple km of flats.
Start time: 8:05am   Finish time:3:45pm  Duration: 7 h 40 min
Can't say enough about how pleasant the owners are at Adventure Lodge, Ron and Lorraine.  Gave us great advice about the hikes in the Park and never tried to push any extras on us.  Lorraine drove 10 of us to the start of the Crossing - about a 25 min drive from the Lodge.  Met some really nice people on the bus - 1 young couple from England, and 3 couples from the U.S., two travelling together from Florida and the other couple from Boston (Peter and Dee).  Peter and Dee had visited Lake Louise before and loved it but never spent time in Calgary.  Besides these Americans we met, there are visitors in the Park from all over the world as we heard people speaking German, French, Italian, Scandinavian languages, lots of British (is that a different language?) and others.
There's not much in the way of parking at the Mangatepopo trail start, almost like they are discouraging people from taking their own cars. Costs only $30pp for a return shuttle - well worth it as the buses pick you up from the end of the trail at Ketetahi Car Park.  However, both Barry and I thought that the best part of this hike was the first half (about the 9K mark), and you could actually turn back and hike back to the start.  The second half was not as dramatic or scenic, and is quite a long slog for less payoff (10.5 km).  I guess we're spoiled getting to hike in the mountains by Calgary - the scenery at home is hard to beat.
The first 2 or 3 kilometres to the Mangatepopo (sp?) hut is fairly flat, a slight uphill grade. Run into lineups at the 2 porto-potties at this stop however, since we were following a few groups of girls.  Seems like they should have more facilities considering how busy this trail is, and this was mid-week!  After this hut, the trail began to climb. Sometimes you had to climb over rocks, which would be a challenge for less mobile types.  They've built lots of stairs, and when you look up or back, you see a row of ants, which are the hundreds of other hikers sharing the trail with you.   Thankfully it was not a hot day, but you still are drenched in sweat as you climb the track towards the Southern Crater.

Panoramic view within the South Crater

When you walk across the flat floor of the Southern Crater, you feel like you're on the moon.  No vegetation, just a mud floor, and lava rock surrounding you on all sides. And you look up at Mt Ngauruhoe, and you can understand why they used in Lord of the Rings as Mt Doom.  It's the perfect volcanic cone shape, and enticed a few hikers up it's summit trail.  This trail is difficult as you have to climb across loose scree on a steep slope - no thanks, looks good from the bottom!!
As you climb out of the Southern Crater, you eventually get to a ridge where lots of us stopped for a bit of lunch.  You also get a glimpse over the edge of the Red Crater below.  At this point, Barry and I debated whether we wanted to do the Tongariro Summit, another 3 km. We'd already hiked about 9 k, and our legs were tired.  But, being this close to the summit, why not?  It looked pretty cloudy up there, which would wreck the views, but what the heck.  You should not tackle this unless you're sure you have enough energy left to finish the Crossing.  It is more climbing, not just a flat 3 k.  It adds another 1.5 to 2 hours to the hike.  Unfortunately, at the top, the mist came in and we couldn't see to the north, but could see Mt Doom to the south.  Basically we tried to jog it back to gain some time as our bus was coming at 4pm.

Red Crater

Climbing yet another ridge we got a fantastic view of the Red Crater, now vivid in the mid afternoon.  Then we got to have some fun, almost skiing down the loose sandy scree towards the  Emerald Lakes below.  It helped that we've dealt with scree before, and you just dig your heels in and go with the flow.  We passed alot of hikers here who were fighting the scree and were getting really frightened. 

After this, there weren't as many highlights for us.  We stopped to eat our lunch at the larger Blue Lake, which became swallowed up in the mist right in front of us.  The rest of the hike was just trying to get down as fast as possible, and the views were obscured on this side of the pass because of the low cloud.  The last 3 km or so is in a lovely forest like Taranaki Falls, but I was too tired to enjoy it.  At last, we reached the car park and thought our legs would never recover.  Amazingly, we weren't that sore the next couple of days - who has time to be sore in New Zealand!!