Monday 21 April 2014

Tongariro - Tama Lakes

We had planned for some time to do some hiking in New Zealand and more specifically, see if we can do the nine Great Walks. The first of these was to be the Tongariro Crossing. We drove down to the Tongariro National Park on Good Friday and endured the holiday traffic southbound. Six hours later after parking on the Waikato Expressway then horrendous rain storms on the road through Otorohonga to National Park we made it to the camp site at Discovery. We put the tent up in the gap between the heavy rain showers.

We were scheduled for the 0610 bus and set our alarm for 0515. To confirm for the younger viewers that is 5:15am!!
We got on the bus at 0605 and the driver gave us the briefing for the weather on the crossing. "Likelihood of high winds and rain, freezing wind chill factor". Given that we wanted to see the mountains and complete the crossing as a family, we decided that we'd skip today and got off the bus ...

We elected to walk to the Tama Lakes. Hit the carpark att Whakapapa behind the Chateau at just before 7 and started walking at 0700.


We got some beautiful views of the plateau as the sun came up and lit up the grasses and shrubs around.



Even at the start of the walk it was evident that we would be in for all sorts of mountain weather. We stopped to put on our rain gear and minutes later stopped again to 'de-layer' when the sun came out.

We walked for a couple of hours over the flat and undulating terrain. 


The scenery was rugged but spectacular.


We stopped often to check out the scenery.


We got up to the Lower Tama Lake at about 10:00. Time for a break, photos and a snack; the boys got a filling on chocolate OSMs (One Square Meals).


Anton decided that rather than walk the track with us, he'd run to the bottom of the crater, trek across it, climb the rim and meet us on the other side.





We went the conventional route and got hammered by some very fierce cross-winds and heavy rain. This was a taste of what was happening higher up on the crossing.



It was quite a hike up to the Upper Tama Lake, but the views made it worth it.


It was time for a rest or celebration of what we had achieved.


Anton and Joseph went for a bit of an explore


The trip downhill was a lot faster, but gave us a chance to see the landscape that we had climbed up.


Anton checked out where he had done his crater run

We walked past the Taranaki Falls on the way back and four boys managed to get under it.



From a 7am star to a 1pm finish, we were on our feet for six hours. Even though we didn't do the crossing (which we heard later in the day was as bad as the bus driver had said it would be), we had a remarkable exposure to the beauty of the central North Island and will be back.