It’s another planet, but in this country. Towards the craters, the ground is hot to the touch as geothermal activity simmers away like grandma’s slow-cooked winter meals. It’s the Tongariro Crossing and it provides 19.4km of alpine hiking to test your legs, lungs and give you some views that give geologists something to fizz over.
What a lot of people seem to forget is that it’s a true alpine environment (read; why are you hiking in jeans) and you reach a peak elevation of 1886mASL. This eclipsed my previous record of 1810mASL down at Mueller Hut, Aoraki, another New Zealand day walk well worth your efforts.
We snuck in the walk a few days before New Zealand announced that we would be going into lockdown due to the Covid-19. It was a last chance to soak up our jaw-dropping scenery for the next wee while. With all the madness going on, nature can have a good rest, free from hikers (sans denim) and she’ll be waiting for us with open arms when we are out of lockdown.
