Tongariro Alpine Crossing
- Amy
- Feb 18, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 14, 2019
TONGARIRO ALPINE CROSSING
16th February 2019
The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is located south of Taupo in Tongariro National Park. It is just under 20km to walk and yes... we did it!
After nearly missing the bus at 5:20am (not a great way to start the day) we drove for just over an hour until we reached the starting point of the trek. Although the first hour or so was reasonably flat we then reached ‘The Devil’s Staircase’ and the name describes it pretty well! It was a really tough climb up as other mountains just suddendly appeared that we had to then hike over haha! But when we reached the highest point and saw the beautidul landscape and lakes. It was at this point that we finally understood why it was such a popular trek.
There was a particularly difficult descent that had loose stones the whole way down. As you can imagine it was just a bunch of people slipping over and skidding down the mountain (very funny to watch from the bottom). Megan spent the majority of it on her bum going down, haha!
We managed to get beautiful weather, not a cloud in the sky which made the hike even more rewarding. Everyone on the bus (if they wanted to do it) started the trek at roughly 06:50am and the quickest guy finished at 10:50am... we finished at 02:15pm and are immensely proud of it haha. We did have a lunch stop and stops along the way so we could actually catch our breath.
It was a fantastic experience as we’ve never done anything like it before. However, starting to wonder at this point what we signed up for when we eventually get to Nepal - stay tuned!
We spent the evening in the bar next door to the hostel - there were definitely a few too many smashed people by the end of it... what would you expect when travelling!
- A
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