The last week of my NZ stay saw me heading up to the North Island to fulfil that last dream. Originally I had planned to fly up one day, do the Crossing the next, and come back to Christchurch on the third day. Elisa warned me that I might be better off including an extra day, just in case the weather turned bad, and the Crossing thus off-limits. This proved to be excellent advice and I am very happy I took it. I had booked my domestic flights before leaving Denmark, and the whole itinerary looked like this:
Monday 24th November – Fly from Christchurch to Palmerston North. Get a bus from Palmerston North to Ohakune.
Tuesday 25th – Wednesday 26th November - Stay in Ohakune, hope to walk the Crossing either Tuesday or Wednesday.
Thursday 27th November – Get a bus from Ohakune to Wellington. Stay in Wellington
Friday 28th November – Fly from Wellington to Christchurch in the morning.
My flight from Christchurch left very very early, at 5.45am on Monday morning, so I arrived in city center Palmerston North just in time for some breakfast at McD. Lovely. I had a couple of hours to kill, so I walked around a pretty park for a while and went to the visitor’s center to ask for advice and weather reports for the Tongariro National Park. The weather there changes faster than it does in Dublin, so it was vital to keep tabs on it. They didn’t really know, but told me that they would have all the information I could want in Ohakune.
The journey from Palmerston North to Ohakune was very nice, but became downright spectacular once we left Wanganui. Almost the entire trip to Ohakune, lasting an hour and a half I think, passed through the most fantastic landscape of steep green hills crowded together like spikes on a hedgehog, the road winding in and out and up and down constantly. Ohakune itself was not madly fascinating, outside of ski season - a lot of the shops were closed for that reason. The first thing I did was go to the visitor’s center and get weather information and buy some postcards, then I headed down the road to the Matai Lodge where I would be staying for the next 3 days. The hostel was very quiet, which suited me just fine – I got a 4-bed room all to myself. There are a lot of hostels or guest houses operating shuttles to and from the major walks in the national park, including the Crossing, but the deciding factor for me with Matai Lodge was the fact that they ran an early bird shuttle, so you could start the Crossing by 8am. Knowing me and my sleeping habits, getting an early start sounded perfect.
I spent a lot of time walking around the village, looking at Mount Ruapehu, which forms the backdrop for Ohakune Village. It was hidden by clouds most of the time, but I got glimpses of it every so often. This is an active volcano which last erupted, quite spectacularly, in 1996. You can buy lots of postcards with images from the eruption. I had a pamphlet describing walks around the area, but I couldn’t really get my act together enough to do one, I was too psyched about the Crossing and worried that I wouldn’t get to go because of bad weather. I did wander a bit along the banks of the Mangawhero River, and walked up to Ohakune Junction, a village 2km up the road. It was like walking around a ghost town from an old Western movie. All the shops were closed and I didn’t see a single human being anywhere.
The weather forecast for Tuesday was not great – it mentioned gale force winds and rain, so no Crossing on Tuesday for sure. Boy, was I happy that I would have an extra shot at it on Wednesday! I bought credit for the hostel computer so I could keep track of the forecasts online. There is a consensus among the shuttle operators that if winds are over 60km per hour, they will not go, for safety reasons. Wednesday initially looked bad too, gale force winds still being forecast, but it slowly kept changing for the better, with Rob making the decision at 7am on Wednesday morning that the shuttle would go. I didn’t get to go on the early bird (I guess it didn’t even run at all that day anyway), but I didn’t care. I would get to walk the Crossing and that was the main thing.
I was VERY excited when we set off, I’d been dreaming about this for so long. Mordor, here I go! I had lots of water, little chocolate energy bars and stuff for sandwiches. Rob said we should be at the Ketetahi car park around 4 for our pickup, and that this would not leave us time for climbing Ngauruhoe or Tongariro, unless we planned on running the rest of the way, but that we would have enough time to do the Crossing itself and not have to hurry. I did harbour a small dream of actually climbing Ngauruhoe, but as it turned out, I was happy enough not to have the time for it – I wouldn’t have had the stamina!
The Crossing started out nice and even from the Mangatepopo car park across flat lands, full of black volcanic rock pieces in twisted shapes and little streams until reaching Soda Springs. There’s supposed to be a little wildflower oasis at the springs themselves, 10 minutes walk from the main track, and I did try to get close, but the ground was waterlogged, so I ended up turning back before reaching the springs. There were quite a few people on the trail, a couple of hundred is my guess. The weather was really good, in spite of the forecast having promised rain in the morning – it was sunny and warm, and I soon had to remove two of my many layers.
After Soda Springs, the track led up the devil’s staircase, aptly named, because it’s a hard climb when you’re not that fit *ahem*. The trail snaked back and forth across the hill face, and seemed like it would never end. I had loads of little breaks and little sips of water, and the chocolate bars helped a lot as well. Mount Ngauruhoe was getting closer and closer all the time on to our right. Once you get up the staircase there’s a nice flat walk across the Southern Crater, or you can turn right to climb Ngauruhoe, which of course I did not. The landscape was magnificent and it was great being on the flat - there was even a bit of snow stretching across our path, which I had not expected. You can take a wee detour towards the end of the path, over to the Southern Crater lake below Ngauruhoe, but I didn’t. I wanted to get the climbing over with, and there was a bit of that to be done at the far end of the Southern Crater path. This climb was in some ways worse than the devil’s staircase – the staircase had had a proper path, bordered and with steps, but here you were on your own, just having to follow the poles that marked the route throughout. Some spots were a bit scary, open ridges where the wind was felt quite keenly.
At the top I found myself looking down into the grandeur of the Red Crater, with Mount Tongariro to the left. This is the actual Crossing giving the name to the walk – the saddle between the mountains. Climbing up to the summit above the Red Crater, I looked down on the beautiful Emerald Lakes, breathtaking in their intensity. At this point, the sky had clouded over, and Mount Ngauruhoe was disappearing from sight behind clouds as well. The trail down to the Emerald Lakes is on loose scree, which was a bit scary at first – it’s a long and very steep slope – but once I got into a sort of skating rhythm, it became fun. The Emerald Lakes were bigger than I had first thought and very beautiful, each of them with a distinct colour all their own.
From there, the trail led over to the Blue Lake, another beautiful body of water. There was a lot of snow around which you can see, so at this point I had put all those layers back on that I’d taken off during the first leg of the walk. The clouds were still massing at this stage, and I thought the rain would not be far behind, but we didn’t get a drop at all. Or maybe it stayed on the mountain, I don’t know.
Once I reached the other side of the mountain and the trail started leading down every so slowly, the landscape changed, and became all tussock and rocks. We had a gorgeous view of the land to the north and west, including Lakes Rotoaira and Taupo, and Mount Pihanga. It is a nice but very winding road down to the Ketetahi Hut, and the smell from the Ketetahi Springs slowly becomes more pronounced, which is not great – it smells like rotten eggs. I had some sandwiches at the hut, along with 20 or so other people. I was making good time, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. From the hut, it was roughly 1 ½ - 2 hours to get to the car park. The last hour takes you through a forest that feels like it will never end, plus it has at least 500 steps that you have to go down, making my legs rather sore at the end of it. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t 500, but it sure felt like it! There were around 50-70 people spread around the car park area, resting, when I got there, and I found a spot for myself on a wooden platform and had myself a drink and a chocolate bar. I was a very happy and tired camper!
That night I went to a nearby bar in Ohakune to celebrate – had a pint and wrote my diary, and went home because I was kind of tired for some reason…. Got on a bus the next day to go to Wellington, which seems like a very nice place. I stayed in a hostel across from the bus station and had a lovely early morning walk through Wellington, along the waterfront, before I caught a bus for the airport. Once back in Christchurch, Elisa and Isabella and I went shopping and the next day I went home to Denmark.
And with that I will finish my tale of the Best Holiday Ever....*sigh*
