We finally left Taupo after some van faff (Highly inconveniently the stove had broken. They bought us a new one and we were off!). By lunchtime we were half way to Tongariro national park, admiring the snow capped volcanoes from over the lake.
We arrived in time to go to the visitor centre for a weather forecast, and get some advice on what walks were open without needing winter gear. We did the short ‘ridge walk’ (does not go to or along a ridge) that evening then headed to a campsite to get an early night ready for a big days walking.
Like every day when we want to do a good walk, we woke up inside a cloud. We decided to make the most of it by doing a more sheltered ‘silica rapids’ trek for a couple of hours then see what the weather did.
Just as we were considering heading off to Wellington early and returning on the way back the sun broke through, and it was as if the rain had never been! We saw the peak of Mount Ruapehu emerge from the clouds and got far more enthusiastic about our next plan- the first western section of the Tongariro crossing.
The day got better and better and we couldn’t resist climbing out of the valley past the underwhelming soda spring that we had been advised to go to at the visitor centre and up towards the southern crater. We pressed on, planning on continuing as long as the conditions remained good and see how far we got. We reached the southern crater rim to find dramatic views of mounts Tongariro and Ngauruhoe (the latter you may know as Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings), their peaks finally out of the clouds. We crossed the snow packed crater to more amazing views of the valley on the other side. At this point we got really ambitious, and started up the ridge towards the Red crater, the highest part of the crossing. We must have been really close to the rim when the winds picked up a bit more than we were happy with- not what we expected, the wind to drive us back instead of the snow! But it did, and we retraced our steps back to the van, happy with getting way further than we’d originally planned and with such awesome views!
Parenting Responsibly 