Tongariro Crossing 2003 - Part 2
On the 12th of April a bunch of us headed down to Tongariro National Park in the North Island of New Zealand to do the 17km Tongariro-Crossing walk which goes over the pass between two of the volcanoes in the park, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro.
Following are the 2nd set of three from the walk See Also: Part1 and Part3
Note: Click on any image to see a larger one. They're all about 800x600 pixels and only fairly small. roughly 80k.
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We still hadn't really hit any significant uphill sections by this stage, so had time to enjoy the view of Ngauruhoe as we followed the track up along the flats. |
| A short break for a breather here as we were half-way up the main climb to the saddle between the peaks. I had to time the shot just right here so as not to accidentally capture any disturbing images of Dave's naked form as he peeled off a layer or two. |
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Pretty much at the top of the saddle climb now, and another fine view looking down from whence we'd come (sort of looking North-West) |
| Here's Graham and Jamie in the flat section of the saddle looking back towards the Ngauruhoe peak. By this time the idiots who'd decided to add a climb to the top of the crater had already made their way most of the way to the top. |
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I'm no geologist, but we all reckoned some of the colours in the rock formations were pretty neat.. |
| We were pretty much at the top of the climb here. Things had cooled down a lot, anyone who had gloves and a hat, had put them on and the weather was just starting to close in a little. |
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Right along the top of the ridge-line was this cloud of steam seeping out of the earth, a quick check of the temperature and we had a quick sit-down to warm our cold butts on the ground. This wasn't the only source of warm and smelly steam as Graham was to discover in the car later on the way home. |
| Dave and Sash emptying boots of 'scree' after scooting down the slidey stuff to the emerald lake. We had 7 hours to make the 4 o'clock bus pickup time which we thought was loads of time really, and so did Dave and Sasha who managed to make it to the bus on time and abandon us (to later pick us up in the car, lucky for them :-) |
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