Tongariro Crossing trail run

This was a last minute decision to spend a long weekend in the North Island, and an added bonus was undertaking the Tongariro Crossing; perhaps the most scenic one day walk in New Zealand.

Starting by running up the Mangetepopo valley, Karen and I climbed up to the pass between Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Tongariro. We carried one pack with 4 litre of water and gear.


After an hour of pleasant running, and climbing to the saddle, we decided to climb Mt Ngauruhoe, which was used a Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Ngauruhoe is a volcano heavily covered in scree and loose rock. There is no defined path to the summit, however we climbed anyway. We met two other pairs of trail runners out that day also.




It took two hours to summit, and the views into the crater were impressive. It was very cold and windy at the summit, with heavy clouds rushing in making visibility poor, and in our light running gear we got very cold. The descent on scree was an experience, with Karen learning how to scree ski downhill.



On reaching the saddle again, with good views of Tongariro, we then ran across some craters, and passed Emerald Lakes and ourt high point, with the next two and a half hours along fantastic trails. We passed hundreds of people hiking along.

We reached the end of the hike after 6.5 hours (3.5 on the trail, with a 3hour side trip to climb Ngauruhoe). Although the weather crapped out in last half of the run, and our views were restricted, we thoroughly enjoyed it.

In all, this was an amazing trail run, and thoroughly recommended to anyone with good trail running fitness.