Tongariro Crossing In A Weather Warning

This photo is what we would have seen if the day had not been full of low cloud cover. Fog, clouds, rain. Views were living in our imagination.

A couple of years back when I was pretending to be a studious university student, I planned a walk along a very famous mountain in New Zealand, with seven strangers.

The university had a hiking group so I asked if anyone wanted to do the Tongariro Crossing with me. This is the most famous day-walk in the country.

I had some interest — all keen hikers. Me? I just wanted to give it a go.

The seven of us all drove down in three cars, we made it to the hostel and met in the common room.

We shared dinner, stories and got to know each other. We also looked at the weather for the following day. It looked terrible. There was a red weather warning — that’s the worst one.

Weather in New Zealand is unpredictable so we decided to sleep on it and see what happened the following day.

The next morning was a rainy, cloudy, horrible day. The kind of day that makes you want to curl up on the couch with a ton of blankets and a long list of Netflix shows to get through. And Uber Eats. All the sweets, only sweets.

I did not want to go.

A couple of us were nervous so we talked to someone at an information centre and asked them what they thought.

They told us the weather would be bad, probably the worst day to do the hike but we could go if we wanted. If we waited a day the weather would be worse and they would not be allowing people up the mountain.

It was either now, or we made another trip in better weather.

I was fine to wait, go see a movie, have a little pamper day, browse a book store and find a cute place for lunch. It was fine. No hard feelings. No problems.

The eight people I was with — all engineers — said “Sweet, let’s go.”

I cannot even start to describe the disappointment I felt.

I had planned this trip so I felt like if they wanted to go, I would push on through too. I’m also not one to pass up an opportunity. So, if my new friends wanted to hike a mountain in a storm, who am I to pass up on this unique opportunity?

We got on the bus that would take us to the start of the track. We all had on our Polypro, beanies, gloves, jackets, waterproof everything… It was not my jam, but again, I don’t like to say no to new opportunities. There was a family with two young kids who were also doing the hike in this bad weather, which made me feel calmer.

Our crew was made up of eight people, here’s the run down: A male engineer — very outdoorsy, this hike was nothing to him; Another male engineer — in the middle of Ramadan-

“Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting (sawm), prayer (salah), reflection, and community.” — Thanks Wikipedia.

So he wasn’t eating or drinking water during the sunlight hours; Two besties who were flatting together — one was an engineer and happy to give this walk a go and figure it out as we went, one was an artist who made jewellery, she was as nervous as me; Two more besties, both very outdoorsy, also engineers and keen to push their bodies to the limit; there was another person, also an engineer and also very outdoorsy, I don’t want to tell her story and I won’t because I don’t know it, all I know was that she was so thin you could see every bone in her body clearly; and then there was me, I was just there to tick something off the bucket list.

That was the group. There were a few people I was concerned about but also not technically responsible for — I was reminded of this by the group when I expressed my concerns about the weather and being organiser.

We headed along the start of the trail and the weather couldn’t have been more gorgeous. The sun was out, and not a cloud in the sky. We were shedding layers, carrying jackets and pouring water over our heads. We stopped about an hour in for a snack and sent photos to reassure the parents that we were safe. We laughed at the weather warning and talked about how lucky we were.

We continued on in high spirits.

We came across some stairs. I think they’re called Devil’s Staircase — and for good reason! It was a never-ending amount of stairs and I struggled. I was carrying two litres of water — dumb — and I had not trained for this. One of the group had to help me, walking with me and being super encouraging. Once I made it to the top the water bottles were distributed.

We continued upwards and our friend going through Ramadan began to fall behind. He slowed down and I noticed his footsteps became smaller. We were at the bottom of a climb that required holding onto a rope as it was almost vertical.

I slowed my pace so he wouldn’t be left in the back, at the same time I tried to keep going at a constant speed to maintain momentum — if I stopped I would’ve stopped for a long time. There was no energy to talk. Only the odd thumbs up.

The winds were also relatively high so talking was useless.

We all made it to the top of that section and we all stopped and waited until everyone was there.

I don’t think my friend doing Ramadan was carrying a pack at that point.

We all decided to stop for lunch. My friend doing Ramadan stopped for a rest. I’m not sure if I knew he was doing Ramadan at this point, I think I learned that after the hike.

We stopped for sandwiches, scroggin — nuts and chocolate — and lots and lots of water. We sat until we had the energy to speak. We talked and talked and talked until someone said we had better keep going if we wanted to make it to the other side by the end of the day.

We carried on walking.

It took about 20 minutes for us to be in a completely exposed area with high winds and freezing cold temps that required us all to stop and layer up once again.

This is where I noticed our friend — the one where you could see all her bones began to act a little funny. She could only find one of her gloves and needed help putting it on as her hands were so stiff. She was mixing up all our names and her speech felt… Slow… She borrowed someone else’s glove — mine, I think, I used a sock instead. Someone had brought extra thick, warm socks — smart person!

She also took all of our spare clothes and she was wrapped up like Pass-The-Parcel.

I think we all noticed our new friend acting a little funny, and at this point she always had two people walking and talking next to her.

We made it through the cold and we came out to the most famous area of the walk. The three lakes. Remember that first photo? That’s what it should have looked like. The fog was so thick we could barely see the person in front of us. We took photos as a group with nothing in the background. We met a lovely retired couple who said they walked this mountain once a year and told us what the view looked like on a lovely day.

We were all disappointed.

But, walking the thin path — it was thin, downhill and it looked like it dropped off on either side (don’t tell my mum!) — it didn’t drop off on either side but the fog was so thick we couldn’t tell. It was kinda fun to walk something that felt a little dangerous — we followed the more experienced couple so we were safe.

Then we stopped at a random little hut we found. We shared lollies and talked about what parts we found the hardest, easiest and most fun — it was tiring to talk while we walked so this was a nice catch up.

We then walked down, down, down, into the most beautiful forest I’d ever seen.

One friend saw a board with shuttle times. One was arriving at the exit point in 40 minutes and decided we could make if we ran.

Ran??

I considered sleeping at that random little hut.

But alas, a group sticks together on a hike, so I did my best to keep pace.

We ran through the beautiful forest and made it to the shuttle ten minutes early. We checked the schedule and saw there were still multiple shuttles after this one.

Yes.

I was annoyed.

I like forests.

We caught the shuttle and made it back to the hostel. We talked, laughed, cooked, ate, slept, watched movies, made plans for the following day and heard a friend had a bit of a sore throat.

Our Ramadam friend said his goodbyes and headed back home to make it back in time for Eid. My respects to him.

We all walked the Tongariro Crossing. In a weather warning.