Marching into Mordor: Trekking the Tongariro Crossing by Yvonne Van Dongen
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The only thing worse than doing the Tongariro Crossing in bad weather is doing it in perfect weather. In bad weather been-there friends and guidebooks warn you to be prepared to throw on duvet-thick layers of clothing in a heartbeat or risk hypothermia. Two people met their end this way in 2006, another two were rescued last year.
Even when you point out we are in the middle of summer, these doom merchants sound another alarm. Whatever the weather at the bottom, it is always bad at the top. No question. Everyone says so.
The Devil’s Staircase
So you stuff your backpack full of thermals, a raincoat, mittens and a hat. At the last minute you pack a cellphone in case you have to be medi-vacced out.
Also they tell you the wind at the top may be so severe you could be reduced to crawling along the ridge on your hands and knees. If you have them you add gators. If you don’t you feel under-prepared.
For some reason neither the prospect of almost freezing to death nor being swept away by howling gales puts you off. Not even the words ‘The Devil’s Staircase’ does the trick. That’s because someone else tells you they’ve gone now. There are steps where once you had to clamber skywards over rocks. The alternative almost sounds civilized.
Besides which everyone says with a terrifying conviction that the walk is just FABULOUS, BREATH-TAKING and LIKE SEEING ALL NEW ZEALAND IN A DAY. They all agree the 18.5 km walk skirting several crater lakes around the summit of Mt Tongariro is the finest one-day walk in the country.
Type-A Achievement
Friends who have never tramped do it the week before and are so moved they are taking up tramping as ‘their thing’. So when other friends tell you they’ve hired out the Ohakune Graduate’s Ski Club for the weekend which is cheap as chips and the forecast is good - how can you refuse?
And blow me down if the weather isn’t perfect on the day. So perfect the sky looks varnished and everyone else within a 30km radius has the same idea.
You know this in an instant because when the shuttle bus drops you off at Mangatepopo at 7.30am it is one of several buses disgorging passengers. And it being New Zealand you know most of them. You see long-lost family members, colleagues and friends. At a glance you’d have to say the crossing appears to be very popular among the legal fraternity and psychologists. Must be a Type A achievement thing.
Of course they all pass you. The Type A’s are running.
Staggering in its Beauty
In any event it doesn’t matter because you want to take your time. It really is, as promised, staggering in its beauty. Not the usual soft leafy green of New Zealand bush which you’ve seen before but this landscape has an alien beauty. An otherwordly majesty. You are on Mars. Clotted volcanic rocks, big empty plains streaked with yellow ochre and on your right the snowless ash-coloured Mt Ngauruhoe rises up somber yet perfectly formed. The Lord of the Rings location scouts did a brilliant job. It so deserves its reinvention as Mt Doom and this really is Mordor.
The re-jigged Devil’s Staircase is hell but over soon enough (well 80 minutes). You are so thrilled you think well, that’s not too bad. The Type As and the young and the reckless go mad and decide to scramble up the sliding shingle to the top of Mt Ngauruhoe. It only takes an extra two hours. Your husband is one of them.
You are now at the top. Well you think you are. This is where you should be wearing everything but your pack because you are so cold. But on this perfect day you are wiping away rivers of perspiration, slathering on sunblock which promptly slides off and guzzling your two litres of water wondering how the Japanese woman with the glittery top and black long trousers in front of you is going to cope.
A Surreal Filter
Still, the pundits were right so far. The Emerald Lakes and the Red Crater are beyond compare. A surreal filter has been laid over everything. The strange jade lakes look almost poisonously beautiful. Here and there wisps of thermal steam puff out and to your right is a gaping wound in the red crater so raw and primeval it belongs to the time the world began.
The view on all sides is nation-wide. Thing is, not even your friend with the fear of heights expected it to be so vast. She dissolves into a shuddering mess and has to be led back down.
So now it’s just you and your son. The rest of the group start later in the day and your husband thinks he’s Ed Hillary.
You linger by the lurid lakes. You will never see anything like this again. Besides, time is on your side. Just that little rise over there and it’s all downhill. But that little rise is a little devil of a rise really. Lots of stops, the heat pressing down and finally at the top. Congratulations. You’ve made it.
Tussock Country
Now that you’re going downhill the landscape alters. Suddenly and definitively you are in tussock country. Grasses, dainty alpine flowers, pretty pink heather. It takes a while for you to realize that this benign landscape is complemented by a stinker of a track. Some sadist has inserted planks of wood several stories high you have to leap down virtually every metre. Your hips begin to ache. Your soles are pressed flat.
The signs say this is delicate alpine vegetation so why in god’s name have they made the track like a queue for Disneyworld? The hut is on your left but the track bellies out to the right and in again and then out. The heat keeps pressing. You keep drinking. You stop more often now though this is risky. It’s hard getting back on the track again once you’ve got off. It’s not unlike the southern motorway on a Friday afternoon. Merge like a zip.
Walk like the damned.
At the Ketetahi Hut the queues to the toilet are long and you learn the water is undrinkable. That’s the good news. The bad news is the finish line is two hours away and to be honest you’re done. You have a headache. You feel ill. Seventy-year-olds caper past. Newborns chortle as they frolic downhill.
The Grasses End
The grasses end as decisively as they’d begun and you are finally in the bush. That familiar shady cool old bush which has turned nastily tropical. Still can’t be long now. But it is when you’ve got heatstroke. Your son complains he can never get any momentum going and swear you will never do this again Mum. You open a vein and write it in blood. Never again. Before or after you throw up? Dunno. Can’t remember.
Finally at the bottom and the best news is the shuttle is waiting and drops you at the door of your hut. Your fear-of-heights early-return friend nurses you. You feel like rubbish.
Your husband returns an hour later. Mt Doom is one thing. That and the crossing on the same day is nuts. He had to be helped down by two women.
The children look at their parents sadly. Yes we are pathetic. But no we’re not sorry. The best thing about the Tongariro Crossing is having done it. The second best thing? Knowing you will never do it again.