Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Day 191 – Manukau, New Zealand

I was awoken before 6 am by a creaking door. Or maybe the wind, or the people getting up, but the door creaking next room over kept me from crashing back to sleep.

So I ended up getting up way earlier than I had planned to. My plans, after talking to the people in charge of telling clueless tourists the basics of an alpine crossing (they have a video and everything), was to walk to the first major hurdle in the Tongariro Alpine Crossing -the Devil’s Staircase- then to turn back. Well, to Soda Springs, which is approximately 500m before the Staircase and it sounds less whiny to say “I walked to Soda Springs and back” rather than “I turned back at the Devil’s Staircase”. 

Tongariro National Park – Soda Springs

Since it was supposed to be a return walk of 3 hours, I didn’t think that I needed to get up at the crack of dawn. But the wind -or the door, or the other early risers- decided otherwise, and when I saw the bright, cloudless blue sky, I decided that it was just as well. 

Tongariro National Park – Caution Kiwi crossing

I made good time to the parking, where parking is restricted to 4 hours -basically, you can’t leave your car and go gallivanting up mountains for days on end. That’s why there are so many shuttles taking you there and back. 

I talked with the parking warden, who assured me that if I overshot my 4-hours window by half and hour, it would be okay. By this time it was 7:20 am, shockingly early, but I was only in the first train of hikers…! 

Tongariro National Park – Valley behind

I said yesterday that I was getting better. That’s true, but I’m still being overtaken all the time by people who walk like they are strolling up the trail while you are huffing and puffing. Though I didn’t see any runner this time.

The landscape is surreal, first full of tussocks of scraggly grass (please admire my vocabulary), streams of reddish water, giving way to tortured pieces of basalt rock and barren black soil. Oh, did you know that’s where they shot Mordor? One wonders why. (See picture header.)

Tongariro National Park – Sulphur-rich stream

I made good time to Soda Springs, where there was still ice in the shadowed parts of the path. The springs are an offshoot of the main track.

Strangely enough, not many people where going in my new direction. Only a couple that overtook me one third of the way back. But boy were there hikers and trampers going up!

Tongariro National Park – Boardwalk

I stopped about everywhere to take pictures (I will upload them tomorrow if possible). And then it was 11am and I was done with my tramping plans 2 hours early!

So I made a very slight detour on my way North to where my friends live to drop my luggage, keeping an overnight bag for Auckland. The road is nice. And there I am, 15 min away from the airport where I’ll drop off my monster SUV in the morning.