Tongariro Alpine Crossing

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is a 19km day hike in Tongariro National Park on the North island of New Zealand near Lake Taupo. It’s known as the best day hike in New Zealand and it’s very popular because of this. When I was planning our trip to New Zealand, it was already too late to plan for any of the multi-day hikes and we didn’t really have time in our itinerary for that anyway, but a long day hike was an option for us.

Because it’s a one way hike, and it’s about a 25km drive between the start and finish, it’s necessary to arrange transportation. I started out looking at shuttle services where you leave your car in a secure carpark near the end of the hike and then get a ride to the beginning. And then I found Discovery Lodge, which had campsites and a shuttle for drop-off and pick-up for the crossing. This ended up being a very good decision as it made the transport very convenient.

Our shuttle to the trailhead left at 4:45am. We were instructed to have a good rain jacket with us or they would not let us on the bus. This is important, because the Tongariro Crossing, with potentially thousands of people crossing each day in the summer, has a history of more rescues than any other track in New Zealand and it has very unpredictable weather.

It was about a 30 minute drive to the trailhead from Discovery Lodge and we were the first shuttle to arrive. Briefly, the sky was clear as the clouds broke up right before dawn, but then after the sun came up, the clouds started rolling back in.

Starting at Mangatepopo Carpark at about 5:15am, the trail is mostly flat and a lot of it is on a boardwalk, the first part of the hike is pretty easy. We started in almost total darkness with headlamps, but the it got light pretty quickly. That flat-ish trail ends fairly quickly and then the climb starts. Over the 19km, the trail starts at 1120m (3674’) and climbs to the highest point at 1886m (6187’) and then goes down to 760m (2493’).

We hiked past Mt. Ngauruhoe and had a great view. Periodically we passed signs reminding us of how far we still had to go and urging us to turn around if we had any problems or if the weather was an issue.

The trail goes right over the top of Mt. Tongariro and the highest point of the hike is the Red Crater. Clouds were wafting through and at times we had low visibility.

The scariest part of the hike was coming down from the Red Crater to Emerald Lake since the clouds were very thick at that moment and the trail is loose cinders. With the low visibility if felt like we could walk right off the edge, but we took it slow and fortunately we didn’t.

In my opinion, although the entire hike was scenic, from the Red Crater to Blue Lake is the most interesting part of the hike feature-wise.

Aside from the brilliant color of the lakes, since Tongariro National Park is an active volcanic area, there are lots of steam vents.

Epic scenery the entire time.

The trail was up and down until we got to Blue Lake, which is quite large and we had a sunny moment.

After Blue Lake, it was mostly down. The down portion of The Crossing is lengthy and at points felt like it would never end, but the view above the clouds was dramatic.

It was weird, as we went down, down, and down, suddenly we were in forest again.

The end! The first shuttle back to the lodge was at 12:30 and we arrived with plenty of time to eat a snack and sit for a moment before our pick-up.

Finding somewhere to eat for dinner was a little challenging in the area, since we didn’t feel like and hadn’t planned to cook. We were willing to take about anything we could find and were happy with passable, but not spectacular burgers from The Spiral Restaurant at The Park Hotel.