What a difference a week makes

A check of the weather forecast on Friday night from our luxury Whakatane cabin (we treated ourselves to a roof, a bed, a plug socket and wireless internet) showed two BIG Suns for Sunday and Monday for the Tongariro Crossing. It was too good to miss, we thought we'd go back for another try, at any rate, Whakatane is closer than the UK. We drove back through Rotorua, past the Rotorua marathon, past the hot pools, Lake Taupo and back to National Park (where we picked up some groceries left there by mistake the week before). We found a nice little lodge that 'let tents in', and set up camp.

Up bright and early next morning, we were at the start of the crossing for 8:15 am and set off on a march. The weather was cold, but good. We decided to leave the car at the start and do a 'there and back' walk, going up to the summit of one of the volcanoes, but we weren't sure which - Ngarahoe (Mt Doom) would be impressive, but a bit hard core, Tongariro would be slightly less impressive, but might provide good photos. In the end, the weather decided for us as a cloud settled on the top of Tongariro. Ngarahoe and the imposing scree climb it was.

An hour and a half of scrambling, slipping, sliding and swearing (on my behalf) brought us to a point where we could just about see the top. The last scramble was pretty tortuous, and as I was scrabbling about on red scorcia, I felt for poor little Frodo, and would have been pleased to have a Sam to carry me up the last leg. Unfortunately, Damo had his hands full, so I had to dig a bit deeper. Still, the top was rewarding when it came. Although there wasn't much of a view, because the cloud had chased us up, it was great to have made it, and look down into the crater - which was really steep and full of icicles - it was freezing up there!

We sat behind a rock and had a sandwich, trying not to get frostbite, whist waiting to see if the cloud would lift. When we couldn't feel our fingers (and after my camera had refused to open its lens), we thought we'd better go down. (Good job we did, because the cloud didn't lift all day.) Going down was brilliant! I was dreading it because coming up was so difficult, but we met two older guys on their way up who advised us to go 50 yards to the left of where everyone else was going down and to start running. It sounded mental, but they looked like Sir Ed, so we thought they were trustworthy. When we got to the part they'd pointed out, and had a go, it was amazing. The scree was really fine and quite soft, so you could dig your heal in and literally slide down the mountain. It was like skiing - brilliant - we were down in about 20 minutes from that point.

We'd had an exhilarating morning and it was still only 12:30 (apparently this is what happens when you get up early), so we thought we could fit in Mt Tongariro as well. It was great to walk the next part of the crossing and see how it should have looked last week. The colours and landscapes were spectacular. We pulled ourselves to the top of the ridge, then on to the summit of Mt Tongariro - taking in views to Lake Taupo and of the rest of the Crossing. After that, it was (just about) all downhill - although at normal pace this time, no scree to run. We'd had an amazing day - I still can't quite believe that we got to the top of Ngarahoe. I guess we'll have to try another time to get the full view from the top - maybe on a different holiday though - not sure my legs can take another walk like that for a month or so.