The Tongariro Crossing!! - January 2

 

The big day! I was a bit worried about this hike, as it was by far the longest anyone in our family had done, but Sean, Angie, and the girls were all very confident in our abilities — and we were so glad to have them (this is just another Monday to them)! 

We woke up early to pack our bags with food and layers and drove to where the shuttle bus would pick us up for the Tongariro Crossing, widely billed as the best day hike in New Zealand. It’s almost 13 miles long and travels through a lot of different terrains. We got the 7:15 shuttle and started hiking around 8, with lots of warnings to be sure to make it to the other side before the last shuttle of the evening picks up.

It started with a moderately strenuous walk through lava fields that looked like a beautiful Martian landscape. There was a little side trek to a pretty waterfall, where some people were swimming, but we chose to press on (and swimming is not supposed to be done on these sacred lands).  We continued to climb through this rocky terrain as the hike got steeper, but we were rewarded with beautiful views back over the area where we came from as well as over to neighboring peaks (some of the tallest in New Zealand). 

Just as we were starting to feel pretty proud of ourselves, we came across this less-than-encouraging sign warning us of how much harder it was about to get:

We made our way up to a pass between dormant volcanoes and reached what had looked like the top of our climb, but found that there was another pass just ahead that we still had to climb up to.  This repeated itself a few times– It felt like at the end of every push we hit another false peak!

Coming across this sign just before the last uphill stretch made me stop and wonder if we were doing the right thing, but with Julia's smile and high five, onward we went.

It was definitely the most intense part of the climb: a bit of a rock scramble along a thin spine up to the very peak of the hike. We were all pretty excited to make it, and we enjoyed the views back from where we had started, until it was time to go down the other side. 

Julia had been managing her fear of heights and vertigo well up until that point, but when she was standing on the narrow peak with step edges on both sides and she realized that we had to go down the sandy/loose rocks, she was pretty overcome with emotion. Angie’s hip is particularly painful for her on the down slopes as well, so she offered to go down and have Julia follow her lead while the others went ahead, but not more than five steps down the hill Angie slipped, falling pretty hard on her bum with her feet out in front of her. Though she actually cut her finger, the timing of her fall just as we were convincing Julia she'd be fine was too funny -- I really couldn't stop laughing, and it helped Julia too. Plus, Angie is one tough cookie! Julia and I took our time making it down the really long stretch hand-in-hand to the bottom of that slope, joined by a few other hikers who seemed all too happy to go at our pace.  The views on the way down were spectacular– a series of three lakes with shades of blue that were out of this world- but we mostly had our eyes on the ground in front of us.

We walked a bit further up to the farthest lake and ate lunch behind a couple of big rocks to avoid the wind. Sean carried a feast of avocado sandwiches, chips, tamari almonds, plums/nectarines, bananas, bbq rice crackers for all of us — very grateful for that!

At that point, we were only half-way through the mileage, but the rest was mostly downhill with some slight uphill sections. The landscape started shifting slowly and then all at once — from volcanic, to some shrubbery, and then all of the sudden very lush and green! We also had a beautiful view of two lakes and the valley below, which made the descent go by much quicker. 

I saw a kid wearing a Babson shirt and asked if he went there, he said his brother did, and then I started asking him questions, starting with where did you go to high school — and Rachel looked up and said “Mountain View High School!” How totally bizarre to run into another student from MVHS in the middle of this very remote hike in New Zealand!

By the time we were down from the hike, we were fully in a jungle! It took a bit of walking through this new landscape along a small river stream, and then we hung out and stretched while we waited on the shuttle to take us back to our cars. 

We walked 35K+ steps, which is definitely a record for me in a single day! 

When it was time to get off the shuttle bus, I could barely walk. We came home and stretched and rolled on the foam roller and took turns showering.

Our initial idea had been to order pizza, but the local restaurants weren’t answering, so Jim and the girls went out to pick up some pizza.  When they got there, though, the restaurants weren’t seating anyone or taking any to-go orders, and the one place they found that could do food had roughly an hour wait.  So, they improvised and headed to the local gas station / mini-mart (our friendly neighborhood Four Square, for those familiar with NZ convenience stores) and picked up a couple of frozen pizzas and ingredients to make your own pizza, some ravioli, some pesto, etc. Not quite the pizza feast we had been envisioning, but we were all so hungry at that point, that it tasted fantastic.  And of course, the well-earned servings of ice cream at the end also hit the spot!  

The Ostrowski girls had loved High School Musical at our recommendation years ago, so we decided to watch Lemonade Mouth, a favorite of Julia and Rachel’s at that age, but it was much less of a hit. Might have been that everyone was pretty exhausted from the day — we all called it a night the minute it was over! 

The next morning we all woke up early and pretended we were going to sit and read books together, but we quickly started talking about childhoods — a discussion that lasted a couple of hours and likely didn’t scratch the surface.  

We had such a great time adventuring with the Ostrowskis — it had been over four years since we last saw them, and I seriously hope we see them next much, much sooner than that!