The Tongariro Crossing

A crossroads of a kind. One that would tint, ever so subtly, the little that remained of our trip. In a way, I guess, it couldn’t, shouldn’t really have been any other way, though at the time, I would’ve disagreed violently. Regardless of the fact that there is no dearth of reasons to go back to New Zealand, the one burning just that shade brighter is that I have to do the Tongariro Crossing. Again.

Even before I’d set foot into Kiwiland, the other thing I had my heart and legs firmly set on, aside from the bungy, was this Crossing. The grave title felt misleading, given that the Lonely Planet (and several other sources) repeatedly stated that this is the best, most spectacular, most mindblowing one-day trek in New Zealand. Promises of emerald-hued lakes, dazzling, scorched volcanic landscapes, plains of ash, steaming vents, and miles of blues and greens and yellows and reds. A crossing between three towering volcanoes, Mount Tongariro, Mount Ruapehu, and Mount Ngauruhoe, the latter, better known as Peter Jackson’s “Mount Doom”. A heady prospect, in the end, too good to be true.

So it was that John and I set out, into the bitter cold of 7 a.m. in National Park village, into a wilderness we could barely perceive, thanks to a stubborn fog that we were told would clear up in a couple of hours. Ever-trusting, we soldiered on, through wisps and streams of cloud, trails of wood and rock, up, down, along, over.

Somewhere along the beginning of the route, unchallenged by the gentle terrain, still optimistic, still cheerful, still bursting with anticipation and energy, I would remark to John that even if the weather didn’t clear up too cleanly, I didn’t expect we’d regret making the decision to do the crossing on a less-than-perfect day. But, as it always comes to pass with brash statements like that, Mr. Murphy prevailed, yet again. I spent the next four days nursing a deep sense of guilt for subjecting John to what ensued that day, digging into my wallet to pay for his meals as atonement, deaf to his protests.

The weather never cleared. The cloud never lifted, and the rain never stopped. The heartless wind never relented. And we never got to see a fraction of all that we’d hoped we would. Every promised landscape, every emerald lake, every red crater, painted white. Obscured by clouds, by stinging rain, and the aching cold.

We spent the next seven hours trudging through volcanic ash and sludge, damp and soft enough for our feet to sink into, but dry enough to scour our ankles and eat away at our toes. Shoes filled with pebbles, ash, mud and hellknowswhatelse, and bloodied socks. Furiously flapping ponchos, soaked parkas, dripping t-shirts, drenched pants, drooping caps. Numb hands, frozen noses, icy cheeks, chilled to the bone and the marrow and the whateverelse that lies within the marrow. Seven hours in wet clothes, further refrigerated by the ubiquitous wind. I have never, ever, ever, EVER been that cold in my entire life.

Towards the end of the crossing, when we’d entirely given up all hope of comfortable survival, we stumbled into the Ketetahi hut, the DOC place for long-haul trampers to crash. Furnished with only the mere essentials – basic bunks and two small stoves, it also hosted an additional feature that brought us (and all the other day hikers with us, the collective foolish!) nearly to tears – a heater. You had to see the sheer numbers of miserable, soggy, icicled trampers that thronged and jostled and wedged themselves against each other like pieces in a jigsaw, just so they could get closer to that object of benevolent radiation. And you had to see the funnels, channels of steam issuing from each of us the instant we stepped away from the wind and into the hut. When he regained sensation in his fingers, John managed to take this picture:

John insists that what he was trying to capture was the haze of steam billowing from my cowering back. I can only recognise bits of my bright blue tee and half a mop of wet hair. But there is a certain haze…