Two Years in KiwiLand: Winter Tongariro Crossing

A group of friends and I decided to take a long weekend trip in September to go back to Tongariro National Park to do a bit of skiing and just spend a weekend away from the big city. It is about a four hour drive from the city so we left work a bit early on Friday in order to make it down in a decent time.

We rented a bach in the town of Ohakune. If you remember, I visited the area a few times in the past, and this is where I originally did the Tongariro crossing back in January. The intention was to attempt some skiing but with me being a novice and some of the others not really in the mood to break their ankles attempting to learn, along with the fact that the weather was forecasted to be quite nice, we decided to do something different.

Chi, Paul, and I decided that we would do the Tongariro crossing again but this time in the winter! We had to rent crampons to climb the snow and ice and decided to do a guided tour as we weren't quite sure what to expect.

It ended up being a great day and was not overly difficult. The going was a bit slower in the snow but the scenery was quite different and still very beautiful. The funniest part of the day was when we got to the top of red crater and decided instead of using our crampons to slowly hike down the hill that we would slide head first all the way to the bottom. It was a huge hill and probably not the safest thing in the world but it was heaps of fun. Chi had the best slide down as she flipped over several times and almost took out all of the spectators at the bottom. Definitely worth doing the second time in the winter!