Tongariro Alpine Crossing

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is a walk in the North Island. It crosses three active volcanoes, and is said to be New Zealand's most famous walk.

Before Christmas one of the volcanoes erupted, and damaged part of the walkway. It was too dangerous, so they closed the crossing, and it wasn't re-opened until May. Even though it was winter, I just couldn't wait till summer to do it, I had been waiting since last winter, so tried to convince Stuart to join me. Walking is not his thing, and the thought of crossing three active volcanoes over alpine terrain is like his idea of hell.

Fortunately though, we managed to travel to the other side of the world and befriend a Scottish couple in neighbouring Maraetai who enjoy the same things as us, a total mirror image. Like us, one enjoys walking and the other climbing. A perfect quartet. Ideal situation for 'wife swap' lol Scott and I could go walking, and Stuart and Lesley climbing.

So when I wanted to drag Stuart up the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, Scott was more than willing to join me instead, and Stuart, Lesley and their 6 year old Finn would go climbing at the nearest indoor wall, make a weekend of it.

The weather wasn't ideal, and our shuttle booked for the morning was cancelled due to poor visibility. But not wanting to have travelled the whole way there and not get to walk, we drove up ourselves later in the morning and just headed out anyway. The terrain was so surreal, it's really barren and the stink of Sulphur is strong, but we could see the volcanoes crystal clear in front of us. The goal was to summit Mount Ngauruhoe. (Mordor from Lord of the Rings, the conical volcano)

It was really tough going, especially the 'Devil's staircase', and I soon became knackered. When attempting to summit Mount Ngauruhoe I had to eventually give up, I was so gutted, but completely wrecked. Scott continued on without me, but soon the weather just fell on us so fast and the visibility was way back down, too dangerous to proceed, so Scott also had to abandon the summit push too.

I'm gutted I couldn't make the summit, but Mount Ngauruhoe is 2,291m high!!!! That's 7,516ft!!!! And I got to within 500m of the summit. That's pretty good going and I'm actually pretty chuffed.