New Zealand: Two Islands, Two Walks. # 2, The Tongariro Northern Circuit

The four-day Tongariro Northern Circuit winds its way around the sacred mountains of Tongariro National Park; Ngauruhoe, Ruapehu and Tongariro. The stunningly beautiful volcanic landscape holds a profound cultural and spiritual significance for the Māori Ngāti Tūwharetoa iwi. In 1886, the iwi gifted them to the New Zealand people as the country’s first national park. In 1993 Tongariro National Park became the first site in the world to be inscribed on the world heritage list for both its natural and cultural landscapes.

Day 1: Whakapapa Village to Mangatepopo Hut

Cloud down to ground level at first light and then a silver glow as the mountains come into being. Three mountains – Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu – form the heart of Tongariro National Park. Perched on the edge of the pacific rim of fire, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu are among the most active volcanoes in the world.

The first stop for our shuttle bus to Whakapapa Village is the trailhead for the Tongariro Crossing, New Zealand’s most popular day walk. Even with a forecast of gale-force winds and below zero temperatures there are hundreds of people filing out of buses and heading into the wild.

We fortify ourselves with a coffee at the only cafe open in Whakapapa and set off across flowering alpine meadows to the edge of the lava flow. Mt Ruapehu is snow-capped and striking. The perfectly coned shaped Mt Ngauruhoe is haloed with clouds, like a classic Japanese print. Sacred mountains both, not just their summits but the paths to them, their lakes and their features. ‘Whatungarongaro te tangata toitu te whenua.’ Man passes but the land endures.

At Taranaki Falls, water spills over the edge of a lava flow into a pool rimmed with steel blue rocks. We walk on through beech forest and out across a craggy 14,700-year-old glacial moraine, following black lava-lined streams into an afternoon ringed by volcanoes. Small birds flit ahead of us, the sun shines and the wind is benign. 

Looking back towards the village we see the grand, art deco Tongariro Chalet, painted on the horizon as if illustrating a fairy tale. All around are valleys carved out by glaciers, alpine daisies, sphagnum moss. Tongariro with its flat top and steam vents is visible ahead. The huts on the Tongariro Northern Circuit all contain information on volcanic hazards and what to do if there’s an eruption. Move as quickly as possible down the mountain and, if there is no shelter, watch for flying fire-red rocks and avoid being hit by them. Alternatively, offer a prayer to the mountain gods.

The moon rises early and half full. The majority of the walkers staying at Mangatepopo Hut tonight are German and the conversations around the dinner table almost exclusively non-English.

Day 2: Mangatepopo Hut to Oturere Hut

Out into heavy early morning mist and across lava fields to Soda Springs. Acidic water falls spectacularly down a wall of lava; the vegetation at its base is lush and bright with buttercups. Then into the seemingly impenetrable cloud, up the Devil’s Staircase to the saddle and across South Crater. Visibility severely reduced, the wind roaring and gusting to 65 kilometres per hour. The climb up to Red Crater treacherous. Loose scree, the path narrow, the slopes steep, moisture turning to ice. The ever-present threat of being swept off our feet. The mountain alive to its name: Tongariro from tonga, a cold southerly blast of wind, and riro, to be seized or carried away.

The Red Crater lost in a whiteout. The Emerald Lakes as mystical as a dream, two pools of pearly emerald emerging from the cloud. Lakes of otherworldly beauty. Fumaroles venting steam and gas. The earth hissing as it is scorched and blackened by the heat of one or other of the twelve active volcanoes and vents within a five-kilometre radius. 

We walk off the Tongariro Crossing track and down through the Oturere Valley, across a remarkable landscape of jagged lava, volcanic deserts and fields strewn with pumice stone from an explosive eruption in AD186. 

In the afternoon the sky clears and we decide to walk the two hours back up to the Crossing to see the landscape unshrouded. We behold three staggeringly beautiful mountains; one snow-covered and white, one black, and one iron red. Patches of ice lie on the black mountain. The sun shines on the Emerald Lakes, intensifying their unearthly saturated green colour. We walk on to the sacred Blue Lake, a deep crater of ultramarine surrounded by barren, sulphurous-yellow mountains. While the sun holds we sit on a scarred, scoured hillside and watch smoke and steam shoot out of vents and whirl around the mountain. In the most unlikely of landscapes, a pacific gull circles Tongariro, like a bird of prey might. 

In the late afternoon, the light drains from the sky and leaves the Tongariro Crossing desolate. A Dante’s Inferno of shattered rocks, ash cones, sombre lunar landscapes, whirlwinds and the build-up of a terrible storm. White mountain-daisies the only gentleness in the stark, broken terrain. 

Day 3: Oturere Hut to Waihohonu Hut

The wind rages all night and rattles the small crowded Oturere Hut. A misty morning and still only two degrees when we set off across the volcanic desert, gravel dunes rippling like sand. The vegetation sparse; small tufts of straw-coloured tussock grass, gnarled stunted lichen-covered trees, white North Island edelweiss. The smouldering beauty of Mt Ruapehu emerges out of the whiteness. As the sky clears we have views of the Rangipo Desert and Mt Ngauruhoe, the Black Gate of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings film.

We follow a barren gravel ridgeline before dropping down to a sapphire blue stream and crossing into greenness. A beech forest, a chorus of birdsong, velvety mosses. The sky a constant play of cloud and weather. 

The stretch between huts is only three hours so we have time to take in the valley and its stories. We detour to Whinepango Cold Springs, the source of the ice blue Whinepango Stream, and to the historic Waihohonu hut. It’s New Zealand’s oldest mountain hut. It was built in 1904 and in use until 1968. There is a generous room with a fireplace for men and a much smaller, colder room for women. A 10-year-old boy says the times ‘were mean to women’. Outside the hut is an information board with a timeline of significant New Zealand and world events. Listed for 1985 is ‘the Rainbow Warrior sinks in Auckland Harbour’, a very coy telling of an act of French terrorism where a ship on its way to protest peacefully against French nuclear testing on Mururoa Atoll was bombed and a Greenpeace staff photographer killed.

Day 4: Waihohonu Hut to Whakapapa Village

No heavy rain as forecast, just some flurries and, after sunrise, the bright arc of a rainbow across the sky, tinting the snow-covered slopes of Ruapehu pink and orange and violet. The wind makes music reminiscent of traditional Māori woodwind instruments. Skylarks, chaffinches and robins singing. Walking under a bright sky and watching as dark storms sweep around the flank of Ngauruhoe.

Ruapehu is visible all day, standing proud and alluring. We follow Waihohonu Stream, hoping to see the endangered blue duck, but even the German twitcher with his powerful binoculars is disappointed. We cross open tussock shrublands, alpine herb fields and strange lava formations to Tapa Saddle. There, between a brooding, snow-covered Ruapehu and a cloud-shrouded Ngauruhoe, are two crater lakes, one hanging above the other, one intensely blue and one a bright emerald green. Lower Tama’s volcanic debris is slowly washing in and filling the crater. Upper Tama Lake is reputedly profoundly deep.

Back in Whakapapa Village, we visit the Information Centre. We become absorbed in the story of the Tongariro massif volcanoes and their eruptions. Such powerful forces, their impact so dramatic. As for the walk itself, we are dazzled by the stark beauty of the landscape, the wildness of the terrain, and the remarkable geological and ancestral riches of the Tongariro Northern Circuit.

 

The first walk on our Two Islands, Two Walks journey was the South Island’s Heaphy Trail. You can read about that walk here.