Tongariro National Park is well known for its natural beauty and hiking, but for many people it will be heard of from being used as the landscape of Mordor in Lord of the rings. It was rightly used for the scenery of Mordor as it is based around a volcano and large lava flows, looking like a very desolate place in parts.Upon hearing of the hiking you could do there I knew I had to go. A walk through desolate volcanic places? Great! Sign me up.
Learning that the weather was rather bad upon arrival, being the start of the off season, and mountainous areas in general being rather fickle with changing conditions, the first day was spent just doing a short walk out for a few hours to some small lakes. A recon mission if you will, to check out the area.
Even on this low level walk you could see why the local park office didn’t want people going up higher into Tongariro National Park. Just standing on a smallish hill the wind pounded hard almost knocking you over, with clouds obscuring the view in many places. To go up higher, which you must do if wanting to cross over the whole national park, there were more hazards of snow and ice.The next day was a totally different scenario, waking up to glorious sunshine and clear blue skies. This was it! The perfect weather window and time to get going. I am pretty sure that all us hikers out there are basically amateur meteorologists! Always banging on about the weather.
The Tongariro National Park can be done in anywhere between 2-4 days, depending on how fast you like to go. Personally at this time on my visit to New Zealand I was at the end of my trip and time was not on my side. I also like to hike fast covering as many kilometres as I can, it is like a mission I set myself. Knowing this I set a limit of walking the whole park in 2 days.
There are 2 ways to do what they call the northern circuit walk around Tongariro, the northern circuit being one of the ‘great walks’ of New Zealand. The first is to go clockwise, which most people do. The second surprisingly enough is to go anti-clockwise, which is what I did, partially due to weather plans. With it being a sunny day that first day, it should help melt some of that snow and ice on top of the higher parts. Or so I hoped.
The start of the walk into Tongariro National Park.
So starting the walk with a friend, we soon separated from each other due to different walking speeds, and the fact that I planned to do an extra side trip during the day that she did not, meaning I at one point had to accelerate on ahead.The official time for the stretch between the park HQ and the first hut is 5 hours. You can sleep in various huts based around the park on your walk, you just have to carry your own sleeping bag and food. Anyway I completed that first stretch in under 4 hours. Great progress already.
That first 4 hours of walking partially covered what was seen the day before, with views of snowy mountains and wild grassy marsh spread around. But this day you could see Mount Ngauruhoe, otherwise known as Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings. The previous day it had been covered in clouds.
Just to give a quick background on Tongariro, it was the first national park in New Zealand, established in 1887, and some of the sites around the area are sacred to the Maori people.
Reaching the first hut I took a quick break to devour some energy bars. I swear one of the reasons to go hiking is just to have an excuse to eat lots of chocolate! Feeling motivated and energised it was time to move off quickly, daylight was not on my side. The official time to the next hut was around three hours. How long do you reckon I did it in?
Copyright © 2014 by Backpacking Man. This article was written by Jonny Duncan and originally published at backpackingman.com
