Kiwi Day 5 - Tongariro Alpine Crossing in Taupo / 30.01.2019

Fortunately, I had already packed all my stuff in my Converse backpack yesterday - including sandwiches, carrots, apples, a few cereal bars, and 3 liters of water. The bag was quite heavy, so I decided not to bring my camera - it would only be a hindrance during the challenging hike if it hung heavily around my neck.
I had also already laid out my clothes to make things a little faster: the meeting point at the Tongariro Shuttle in front of our hostel was at 5:20 in the morning.
I put on my black shorts, my already somewhat worn Saturday T-shirt, a black Adidas sports jacket over it, and my traffic cone-colored rain jacket. Cecilie made me a little worried that I was dressed too cold, as she contemplated whether she should bring gloves because she was afraid of freezing on the high summit - however, Thien persuaded her not to. Nevertheless, the thought of wearing shorts made me a little uneasy, but I just didn't have cool long hiking pants.

Ready to go, we went outside into the darkness and it wasn't really cold, which initially reassured me, but the weather could be different during the hike... but it ultimately wasn't. After the one-hour drive, a spectacular sunrise that I observed through the window, a bathroom break in one of the disgusting toilets at the car park (fortunately, I also had wet wipes with me because I had read that there is usually no toilet paper in the toilets along the way), and an unplanned reunion with Vera, who joined us, I felt a chill in the cooler morning air, but it soon became really warm and everyone was jealous of my shorts.

The trail started behind a large green sign that read 'Tongariro Alpine Crossing - 19.4km' at an altitude of 1150m, the sky was clear, and we already had a good view of the impressive Mount Doom, or rather Mount Ngauruhoe. A few days ago, Anna stood here in complete fog, couldn't see anything, and almost got blown away by the icy wind on the summit of Mount Tongariro - it's pretty crazy how the weather can change like that: today, we had perfect conditions.

So Cecilie, Thien, Natalia, Vera, and I took a deep breath and then, amidst a crowd of other people (why were they all already there?!), we started the longest hike of my young life at almost exactly 7 o'clock.
First, a fairly straight and level path led us through dense, flat, dark green shrubs that were occasionally interspersed with small patches of purple flowers and white blossoms - which already looked pretty magical on its own, but with the perfect stereotypical volcano shape of Mount Doom in the background, it looked a thousand times more magical. Every now and then, a small stream called Mangatepopo Stream flashed between the plants until the sandstone path changed into a boardwalk - there, the flowing water became more prominent and also crossed over a few larger stones. Mount Doom also grew bigger on our right side, and the sun began to peek from behind the mountains to our left.
Eventually, a few stairs were added, which made us slightly out of breath, and I quickly took off my plastic jacket and weirdly tied it around my backpack (later on, thanks to photos, I discovered that I looked like a snail with an orange snail shell). I also tied up my hair, but that didn't last long, as I eventually realized that it looked completely silly. Life is not so easy without a mirror.
So we continued slightly uphill - this was supposed to be the easy part, until after about an hour, we arrived at a small toilet, the last one for a long time, and behind it, the Devil's Staircase already towered threateningly between 2 quite steep sections of the trail. Now it would go almost 90° uphill for 200m (reaching 1600m), and judging by the name of this section, we would really have to struggle here... and that's exactly what we did. We walked over the fragmentary debris of old and new volcanic eruptions, which made it easy to slip and required us to constantly look down at our feet.
Thien somehow was the fastest among us and eventually overtook us, while Cecilie lagged behind, gasping for breath. Natalia was just ahead of me, and at some point, I told her that I felt like I was dying on the inside and leaving a piece of my soul here (just like at the Josephine Falls in Oz). However, she reassured me with this sentence: 'But it's a sacred place, so it's a good place to leave it'. Natalia always had a wide smile on her face, and I admired her for that.

After a short break after the 200 stairs, we caught up with Thien again, and when we took in the view from up here and realized how far we had already come, I knew that all the sweat and soul-killing would be worth it (it would be cool if this place could be my Horcrux now, even though I haven't killed anyone. Or have I? .. What?). Once we reached the top - at the South Crater - we had a short, completely flat stretch - it was a huge barren bright area right in front of Mount Doom and it was like balm for our legs and our eyes. Because in this light, you could see the red rock at the top of Mount Doom, the red color resulting from the oxidation of iron in the rock due to the high temperatures, which formed a beautiful contrast to the earth tones.
Here, we took some pictures and asked a passing hiker (who had a huge, fat 50l backpack and stuck in my memory) if he could take a photo of all of us together.

However, the flat trail only lasted for about fifteen minutes, and then it turned into a real climb - with no safety measures to prevent us from falling into the depths. We walked over loose rocks, around narrow crevices, and along cliff walls, and every now and then, a small bunch of white flowers would appear, which always made me happy because it was a small distraction and sign of life among all the volcanic rock.

And then, suddenly, we were at the top. The Red Crater and the summit of Mount Tongariro were at an altitude of 1900m, a huge hole colored red and black, and we had breathtaking views of the Rangipo Desert, which extended over a cliff section that I ventured onto, and Vera had to take a few photos of me.
Now, it was mostly downhill, and we had almost completed half of the hike. And then I saw the Emerald Lakes, and that sight made everything better. 2 stunning emerald green crater lakes in the middle of the rocky landscape, surrounded by gray volcanoes, and it was just magical.
However, the descent was on loose scree, and I had read before that the easiest way down was in a skiing style - if you tried to walk normally, you would only slip, which I witnessed a few times. So I buried my shoes in the dust and left 2 long trails behind me; Cicilie eventually used them for herself after falling on her butt a few times, and we must have looked absolutely ridiculous. But we didn't care because the Emerald Lakes looked too beautiful, and it was crazy to be experiencing all of this here and now.
After a photo stop and 30 minutes of downhill, we all reconvened since everyone had slid down at their own pace, and we had a well-deserved lunch break at 10 minutes to 11 o'clock. And the first thing I did when I sat down on a rock between the lakes was to empty my shoes. A shower of stones and dust came at me, but my socks were even worse. The dust had made its way into my socks, and quite a lot of it - it was almost ridiculous how much came out when I took them off.
At some point, Thien continued on, and Natalia and Vera soon followed, but Cecilie and I wanted to stay a little longer at the sacred lakes between which some smoke emerged from the ground before we also set off - the next stage was the Blue Lake, a cold acidic lake that we had already seen from the Red Crater. Here, it briefly went uphill again, but overall, it was nothing compared to the Devil's Stairs or the climb afterwards, especially because I got along really well with Cecilie.
The Blue Lake was also sacred and touching it or eating and drinking around it was forbidden.
We met Vera and Natalia here again, but Thien had already moved on, and we probably wouldn't catch up with him anymore - after the Blue Lake, a short walk suddenly revealed a huge landscape of forests, fields, and lakes in front of us, Lake Rotoaira, and the last part before the finish line would take us through the seemingly endless forest.
Now, it was steep and zigzagging downhill through slightly more lively nature: flowers, grass, and shrubs. At some point, my legs started to hurt even more because a steep descent was actually worse than a steep ascent - you could feel your entire body weight a thousand times more.
After about an hour, we reached the Ketetahi Shelter, where there was another toilet, and I ate some of my carrots. We took a short break here, and Cecilie expressed her envy of my shorts because the sun had been beating down on us brutally for a while, and it felt like it was 30 degrees Celsius - there was also no shade, and luckily, my cap protected me well from a bad sunburn. I was also very glad that I hadn't brought my long jeans as I had originally planned, just in case - now we didn't even need our jackets, which were both hanging heavily around our hips.
Once everyone finished using the toilet, we continued - now, only a part remained ahead of us, which would take us about 2 and a half hours. It went steeply downhill, with occasional stairs that I climbed, gasping for breath, and I watched a small column of smoke coming out of the mountain until it was no longer visible.

At some point, Vera had such severe knee pain that she fell behind a bit, but she told us not to wait. Then, the downhill stairs began, and I didn't know they could be so mean - I hated every step of the last 5 kilometers, and my toes hurt because they kept hitting the front of my shoes. The path seemed endless, and Natalia, Cecilie, and I almost did a little dance of joy when we suddenly found ourselves in the forest, which we had known beforehand meant the end.
We passed a large stream, which apparently could be quite dangerous in different weather conditions, and then, almost exactly at 2:20 pm, it was over after a little over 7 hours.

I could hardly believe it when we arrived at the car park, and we just smiled at each other relieved for a while. It almost felt like a dream because everything I had seen during the last few hours on this hike had been incredible nature, and the fact that something like this exists is just unbelievable, Earth is simply an incredibly beautiful place if you look in the right places, and everything was unreal and crazy. And that's why this was one of the best things I experienced in New Zealand, if not the best.

After waiting for a while, the shuttle service brought us back to the hostel, and I just lay in my bed and stayed there for a while.

In the evening, we went to a bar opposite and toasted with a clear cider until we eventually went to the Element Bar next to Base because they had 50 cent chicken wings and we were hungry.
Here, we met a few English people who were working in Taupo and they challenged us to a game of beer pong, and I have to say, I wasn't bad at the game. We won, of course, even though we had a little slump in the middle, which is why one of them joined our team - but only because Natalia always missed the target by a mile.

And when I eventually fell into my bed afterwards, and after packing my things for tomorrow, I fell asleep like a baby. What a day.

Song of the day: Walk Alone by Rudimental and Tom Walker, because we made it through this crazy hike together and I was never alone.