Te Araroa day 25 - Tongariro Holiday Park to Mangahuia Campsite [Tongariro Alpine Crossing] / mile 716

If there was one reason to hike the North Island it would have been this. Going through Tongariro Alpine Crossing was amazing.

After yesterday's (almost) day off forced by the weather, I had a surplus energy I decided to spend on an early ascent of the Red Crater (1868m) but first there was few miles of roadwalking to complete. Sunrise was very pretty but most of the sky was still covered by clouds. Around 7:30am I stepped onto Tongariro Alpine Crossing trail, well maintained, very popular with day hikers and people doing few day circuits around this volcanic extravaganza.

The area smelled of rotten egg, sulphur being carried by the streams which made them unsuitable to drink and had warning signs to avoid any confusion. Trail went steadily up not revealing anything spectacular yet but the landscape was already much more interesting than on any of the previous sections. Tongariro and Ngauruhoe were still active volcanoes, last eruption happened here in 2011 and it closed the trail for six months, one of the ballistics (rocks thrown out of the volcano) smashed the tourist hut, luckily no one was there at the time.

Volcanic areas always look like something from a different planet and Red Crater  was no different, suddenly landscape opened up to a vast plane with Blue Lake and Mount Ngauruhoe on the horizon, steaming pits and lava rock in all shapes and sizes covering the surface. I still had to climb Red Crater, stepping on volcanic ash, it was a slow process. At this point there were hundreds of tourists going mostly downhill as the most popular route was going north.

Top of the Red Crater had the best overview of the Mount Ngauruhoe and a great vantage point over the crater itself. Tourists kept on coming and asking if I could take their picture so I didn't stay here as long as I would like to. Path was descending from here on. It took me two  hours to finally step out of Tongariro Alpine Crossing onto a Mangatepopo Track, carrying on through Tongariro National Park. On the horizon I could see a beautiful, snowy Ruapehu Mountain and it's sight didn't leave the view until the end of the day.

At 3pm I arrived at Whakapapa Village, I could theoretically stay here at the Holiday Park but decided to push few more miles as it was quite early. I followed Whakapapaiti Valley Track through the marshlands until eventually I've reached my final destination few miles before the town called simply National Park.

Here after an easy river crossing and spotting a quite rare purple eel in the water, I set up my tent on the other side of the stream, most of hikers were using huts and holiday parks for shelters at this point so I wasn't expecting anyone else to join me.

Overall it was an absolutely spectacular hike I'm happy that I've waited for the weather to clear before walking this section as it would loose most of its appeal on a cloudy, rainy day.