Tongariro Northern Circuit - Part 1

Finally, we are on the move. The preparation has taken us a while and made for a lot of discussion but today is the day we are going to do our first trek.

The plan for Day 1 was pretty intense. The Northern Circuit starts and ends in Whakapapa (pronounce Fakapapa) which is a ski resort at the foot of the Volcano Mount Ruapehu. It stands about 350km away from Auckland so it's a bit of a drive. We decided not to arrive the day before to avoid paying for an extra night in a lodge/hostel and because the day 1 hike is pretty mild, it's 9.4km and it's mostly flat. In hindsight it may not have been the ideal decision considering the fact that we ended stressing a bit much and being a bit too tired when we arrived.

We woke up at 6am that day, put the finishing touches to our packing, panicked a couple of times, and were out the door at 07h30, to get the Northern Express bus into town walked up to the Sky City Intercity terminal (near the spikey towerey looking thing) and gabbed the 08h45 bus to National Park Village. Now that bus ride transforms a 4h car ride into a lovely 6h bus ride through the Thermal Explorer Highway stopping in all the towns on the way...Pleasant stuff.

We arrived in National Park Village Station at 15h00 to catch our shuttle to Whakapapa (another 20km away) now mind you, by that time we still have not walked a metre.

We reached Whakapapa at around 15h30 and were greated by quite a phenomenal sight. The towering Mount Ruapehu covered in snow under a beautiful sunny day. After checking at the DOC office that everything was in order and eyeing the souvenirs we would buy if we made it alive, we took our hiking sticks out and started what could not take us more than 3h or risk arriving to the hut after sunset which would have sucked.

The first portion of the northern circuit (one of four) is a walk through short bush and forests heading full north and leading to the first hut the Mangatepopo Hut that sits just at the foot of the beautiful Mt Ngauruhoe. The hike is pretty easy despite some areas having pretty deep ravines that had been dug from the heavy rains of the previous days.

The walk went pleasantly despite the stress that we were feeling about our first experience in a hut and the weight of backpacks on our shoulders. We finally crested that last hill and saw the Mangatepopo Hut in the distance. We giggled like school girls thinking that the journey we had started 12h ago was finally over and we were going to eat and sleep.

We arrived at the hut pretty much dead last, everybody had already claimed the nice bunks. There were two dorms in the hut and each slept 13 and both were almost full, we managed to get a pair of mattresses one  on top of the other which at that point was good enough. The (very) kiwi warden of the hut gave us a quick hut speech about safety and what to do if the volcano explodes (run. that's what you do.). We witnessed the sunset while making diner, it was beautiful, the day was so clear you could see all the way to Mount Taranaki and its beautiful snow cap from the hut (around 200km away). 

Diner was another adventure, we tried the Carbonara freeze dried food packet from backcountry cuisine and that was pretty gross. The powder kind of stuck to the bottom and gave us a very watery top of the dish and a very dense gross bottom of the dish...We tried to wait for the sun to completely set so that we could see the stars but it turned out to be taking too much time so we decided to say screw it and go to sleep. We slept like logs. I did end up seeing the stars when I woke up at 1am to go to the toilet and I almost screamed at how beautiful it was, I thought I had seen clear skies but that was truly something else.

With the advice of the Warden to leave the hut early to try and beat the crowds on the hike of Day 2 (which is shared with the day hike Tongariro Alpine Crossing), we woke up with the sun at around 05h30 after a good night sleep albeit punctuated by snores from our lovely bunk neighbours. Grabbed a quick breakfast with Capuccino and power bars and went off. Despite all our efforts the weight of the packs really slowed us down and the day hikers without packs were quick to catch up with us. The second day hike is the tough part of that track, it features a 800m elevation change over 9km. So we took it slow even if it meant being mingled with those day hikers. 

The most random thing happened. As we were climbing I heard french people behind me, nothing too odd at that point but when we stopped to bask in the beauty of the daylight hitting the summit of Mt Taranaki, one of them offered to take a picture of us. Only a couple of hours later I realised that that French man was TF1's famous presenter Denis Brogniart who was filming a bit for Auto-Moto. The following picture was taken by him.

Anyway, we kept on going in our climb all the while I was trying to figure out who that guy was... we reached the Northern Crater of Mt Ngauruhoe and had a quick snack break to recover from the exertion of the climb.

We kept going to reach the summit of the Red Crater and by 10h30 we were there. The Red Crater sits at 1,886m and is stunnigly beautiful. We didn't climb Mt Ngauruhoe for two reasons, the first one being that the warden at the first hut explained to us that the mountain is a sacred Maori site so it would be very disrespectful to try to get to the top, and the second one being that the track is not marked and there is a lot of loose rocks on the ascent that make it fairly dangerous. 

We stopped for a bit at the Red Crater and chatted for a bit with my now best friend Denis Brogniart, and went on our way to the Emerald lakes. The track goes downhill from there which is nice, but the gravel was pretty loose and the descent into the emerald lakes saw a lot of the ill-equipped day hikers fall on their butts. Ha.

The sight of the lakes is incredible, those pools of colour in the middle of this lunar landscape takes your breath away. They apparently get their colour from dissolved minerals that are washed off from the face of the mountain. They are located in the middle of a very active area as there are a few vents just nearby that make the whole area smell just lovely (if you like sulfur and strong smell of boiled eggs).

We decided to take the side trip to the Blue Lake (Rangihiroa's Mirror) and have our lunch break overlooking the lake. The wind at that point was FIERCE. We're talking in the negative degrees windchill so we strapped on our winter gear to try to fend it off. There were still a couple of snow banks at that altitude so Aliona and I did the normal thing and had a cheeky snow fight.

After a very filling and well deserved lunch we went back on our steps for a bit and started the descent towards the Oturere Hut.

The landscape changed completely on the way down it went from this lunar landscape to a desert that looked a bit like what can be found in Oman, rocks and small bushes and heat that radiates from the dark rocks. We reached the hut in no time and by 16h we were sipping tea on the front porch while admiring the view in silence. We managed to get bunk beds next to one another in the hut as well which was pretty cool.

The cool realisation of that evening was that the people from the first hut were there as well and some sort of bond was beginning to form. We chatted for a good part of the evening with pretty much everyone and managed to get some great trekking tips from the pros!

The meal that night was Outdoor Cuisine's Coq au Vin which was ok but still not exactly Michelin star. Speaking of wine, our now trail BFFs Lana & Cara the saviours of the day had actually brought some wine with them and were looking to get rid of it (something about liquids being heavy) so we happily helped.

This post has run on a bit. I will detail the next two days in a separate post. At this point we were pretty much half way through the trek.