Well . . . that happened.

The day of the Mangatepopo walk dawn bright, and very early.  We had to drive from Wellington to Tongariro National Park so left early on  29th May (c. 7:30 am) and with a stop at my mother’s on the way, got there about 12:45 pm.  Contrary to my worst fears, it was a beautiful day.  Sunny and clear skies, and the mountains were look beautiful.  After paying for the hut fees at the Department of Conservation office, and some last minute preparations, we set off down the track at 1:30 pm.

This was about half an hour behind my planned schedule.  The walk is said to be 3 hours (5 hours in wet weather).  I was expecting 4 hours, as I seldom walk to the time on the signage. – it took a bit longer than that.

To be fair, they did warn us.

“Warning track condition poor”

But, come-on!  That sign looked ancient.  This is part of one of New Zealand’s great walks, surely the track condition can’t be that bad.  It wasn’t so bad when I was 12.  And I talked to the DOC lady at the office and asked about track conditions, and she said it was fine!

So we set off, optimistic and happy about what the future had in store for us today.  And the track was great!  At first.  It was well stepped with a wooden sidewalk through the scrub.  The day was cool, but the sun was out and I was quite warm with no thermal layers on at all.

Icey, but well maintained – for now.

However, it didn’t take long and all of a sudden the nice condition of the track started to worsen.  But nothing too bad.  It was narrow and a bit rutted, and muddy.  But most of the mud was frozen, so that was fine.

We hiked merrily along for about an hour, and at an ok pace.  There were a few gullies that we had to traverse but that wasn’t unexpected and the views were amazing.

Flo and Mt. Ngauruhoe

Me and Mt. Ruapehu: Look at that belly! Shameful.

Mt. Taranaki off in the distance

I was feeling fine, jolly even, but a little concerned about the time we were taking, but confident we would make the hut before sundown at 5:30 pm. However the track took a sudden turn for the worse. We came to the top of a steep gully and the track was completely eroded away.  Luckily there was an alternative path that previous trampers had been making to the right of the eroded track, but it was not easy going, at least for me.  And this was just the beginning of the bad.

Hey! Where’d my track go?

As we got further and further along the track got muddier, more rutted, and the steep sections down into the gullies (with a few merciful exceptions) got more washed out and eroded.  A notable highlight was when we came to the bottom of one gully to find a crevasse about a meter deep and spanned by two boulders about two feet apart, and covered with ice.  After much umming and ahhing I passed my pack to my long suffering hiking companion (Flo) and managed to scramble and slip across.

Time wore on, and the going was slow.  And although Flo remained obstinately positive in the face of a situation that screamed for grumbling and complaining, I was getting a very bad feeling that we were going to end this walk in the chilly cold of night.

Flo could still admire the scene. I couldn’t

I was right.

The sun set with us still about 2.5 km away for the hut.  My newly purchased headlamp failed me (flat battery – doh!) so we proceeded with hand held torches.  And it was very very slow going from then. Luckily, for the most part, the track was starting to improve, but there was still some erosion to contend with, and one very memorable ascent where the track had turned into a waterfall . . . which had then frozen.  So we were climbing, in the dark, with a flashlight in my mouth, a frozen waterfall – at least 1000 ft high!  This was one of the most amazing feats done by man.  When they right my history, this is going to rank up there with Hillary conquering Everest.  I’m expecting a knighthood this New Years. (ok, it was only a few metres high, but one man’s mole hill is another man’s Everest)

I was reaching the end of my endurance.  After 5 hours walking I was unable to go too far anymore without frequent rests.  This really worried me.  I wasn’t feeling the cold too badly.  By Flo I think was struggling in the below freezing temperatures.  But I had to stop and rest, and she had to shiver beside me.  To the point that after 1.5 hours walking since nightfall even her optimism was failing.  She was getting concerned that we had missed the hut (which we knew was slightly off the track).  I was pretty sure that we couldn’t miss the hut.  The track from Whakapapa Village we were on joined the Tongariro crossing track just before we would reach the hut, and I was sure we couldn’t miss that.  But I was in no mental state to be able to express this in a confident and reassuring way.  So just grunted.  We both started seeing “hut mirages” in the dark, where the snowing outline on the hills looked like the roof of a hut.

Finally my flashlight revealed what I had been wanting to see for a while and I just started laughing.

Hut 6 Minutes away – I took 25!

This raised the spirits considerable, and the track we joined was an expressway compared to what we had come over.  Even from here it took another 25 minutes to get to the hut.  I had to stop twice, and the cold was burning my lungs.  But I could enjoy the rests, and marvel at how beautiful the night was.  It was nearly a full moon, and on this track we could (and did) turn off the torches and walk by moonlight.

We got to Mangatepopo hut at about 7:30 pm.  6 hours after we started.  It was awesome when we crested a small hill and saw the light flowing out of the hut.  I even broke into a song!  A rather poor rendition of “Poor wayfaring stranger” but it felt appropriate (as if Flo hadn’t suffered enough).

1190 m – glad I didn’t walk from sea level

Mangatepopo Hut the next morning

We had already decided that we (I) couldn’t walk back out the next day the way we came.  So one of the reasons I chose this walk was that the hut is actually only 30 mins walk away from a car park.  So I phoned my sister and arranged transportation (in the form of my nephew Doug) to pick us up the next morning and transport us back to the Chateau.  That sucked, I felt like I had failed in my goal of walking there and back again (in good Hobbit tradition) and let Flo down. I could hear the amusement in my sister voice that I had failed (not that she means me harm, but we as a family do delight in the failure of each other) and I couldn’t even face my brother-in-law later that weekend.  All up I am finding it difficult to see this trip as a success.  Probably “Pre-mature” and “Ill advised” would be the best descriptors.

Looking on the bright-side.  My legs didn’t hurt like I expected.  My knees and feet didn’t seize up like I feared they would, so maybe The Plan™ has achieved something.  It will take a few more days to really digest the take-home lessons from this trip.

Track from the Fit-Bit. It accidentally paused it for about 20 mins and 300 m