The Tongariro Crossing

Another one of my great ideas before we arrived in New Zealand was to book the Tongariro crossing which was recommended to me by some friends I met travelling (may need to rethink that friendship now) only kidding. However not really knowing too much about it I had in my head a leisurely stroll over a mountain top and back down again. The whole mountain part should have given away that it wasn't going to be a walk in the park.

Anyway the morning arrived for us to put on our walking boots, grab our hats and gloves and head over to where we were to check in with our guides and walking groups. Now up until this point I was still thinking that whilst this might be a challenge it wouldn't be too hard. That was however until the guides handed us our crampons and pick axes! Ok this was going to be interesting. 

So off we set. Backpacks on, ice picks in hand we started the steady climb up the mountain side. It was funny as at one point we saw a small amount of snow scattered around and thought how lovely it looked and that it must be the leftover from the winter - oh were we in for a big surprise. 

Soon after our short flat stroll we hit the beginning of the real climb and boy was it steep. There had to have been about a million steps (ok slight exaggeration but I wasn't in the mood to start counting them) it was however safe to say there was a lot.

Oh and that small bit of snow we had seen at the bottom soon turned into a lot of snow and to give you a real idea of how much I am talking about people were actually walking past us with ski's!

Being the troupers that we were though we did not let this put us off and up we carried on trekking up the mountain side.

This went on for about 8km, stair after stair after mountain edge after freezing cold hands. As we neared the top our guides had a little side meeting and gave us the unfortunate news of not being able to continue on with the walk. The wind at the summit was just too strong and they feared for our safety. As disappointed as we were we knew that they wouldn't have made this decision lightly and therefore it really was in our best interest to turn around and head back down to where we had come from. The worst part of all of it was we were only about 1 and a half km from the middle and if the mother nature hadn't been acting up we would have made it all the way across. As it turns out we in fact did 16km of the 19km we would have done had we completed the walk. Not too bad an attempt I don't think and I guess it just gives us reason to come back again one day and try again! However maybe next time we will try summer time!  :-)

-x-