Ngāuruhoe, Tongariro, NZ

Tongariro National Park and nearby. Ngāuruhoe is a little above and right of center.
Screenshots of the NZ topographic map are licensed as CC BY 4.0 by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).

Mt Ngāuruhoe (2287m) is an active stratovolcano in Tongariro National Park, in the Central Plateau of North Island. It is by far the highest, most scenic cone of the Mt Tongariro volcanic complex, explaining why it was chosen as Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. The trailhead at Mangatepopo parking lot, which it shares with the lower-elevation Tongariro Crossing, is around 25 minutes from the small town of National Park (Waimarino).

Ngāuruhoe last erupted in 1975.

Over 70 ash eruptions have occurred between 1839 and 1975, on average about six years apart. Eruptions of lava are less common – they have been witnessed only in 1870, 1949 and 1954.

-Te Ara

The obscure, nearby Te Maari last erupted in 2012, destroying a hut with a well-aimed pyroclastic rock.

The parking situation is challenging, so read the below carefully before setting out. There is also some sort of Tongariro Crossing booking system, implemented since my last visit. At the moment, it remains voluntary, and there is no daily cap. By the time you read this, it may be mandatory and come with a cap.

Time

Other hikers report round-trips of 5 hours 45 minutes, 7-8 hours, and 10 hours. Before DOC removed their sign, they estimated a 3-hour return from the point where hikers leave the Tongariro Crossing - at the top of the Devil’s Staircase (discussed below).

My own time for this hike was very long. Starting on the easy flat boardwalk near the trailhead, I suffered a fair amount of leg pain, probably due to driving from Auckland to Tongariro the previous day in a small rental car (think Toyota Vitz) without room for my long legs, and took a lot of breaks during my hike. In normal conditions, I suppose that the hike would have taken me 8.5-10 hours, including all breaks.

Access

Tongariro Crossing’s normal starting point is Mangatepopo parking lot. The other trailhead is Ketetahi parking lot. Mangatepopo is at a higher elevation and is much closer to Ngāuruhoe, making it by far the better starting point.

There is a problem! Both parking lots have a 4-hour time limit, which DOC enforces to discourage parking. Most hikers get dropped off at Mangatepopo and picked up Ketetahi. There are several shuttle bus companies which do this, some starting quite early in the morning. So it is possible to hike Ngāuruhoe as a side-trip to the Tongariro Crossing, without needing to park your own car at either parking lot.

But what do you do if you want to start and finish at Mangatepopo, and you can’t find a friend or a shuttle company to both drop you off and pick you up? (No shuttle companies advertise this service.)

There is one exception to the 4-hour time limit. People can buy a pass allowing them to stay in Mangatepopo Hut or camp at Mangatepopo Campsite. These passes can be purchased for specific dates via the yellow ‘Book online’ button on the DOC webpage for the Tongariro Northern Circuit. Assuming that passes expire at noon each day, 2 consecutive hut passes will cover a full day-hike on Ngāuruhoe. That’s what I did, and my car didn’t get clamped/ticketed.

Will this continue to work for out-and-back day hikers? Or will DOC somehow put an end to this dastardly workaround? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Route

Variants:

AllTrails reports 1147m of elevation gain over 16.4km out-and-back, which is the hike I discuss here.
It also reports 1613m of elevation gain to do the Tongariro Crossing with both Ngāuruhoe and Mt Tongariro as side-trips.
I can’t find these measurements for the Tongariro Crossing with only Ngāuruhoe as a side-trip.

Ascent

The first portion of the hike overlaps the start of Tongariro Crossing. It is on well-maintained gravel/dirt track or wooden boardwalk.

It’s possible to take a few minutes for a side-trip to Soda Springs. This should not be done in the dark because the track is nowhere near as good.

Shortly after the turnoff to Soda Springs is the foot of the Devil’s Staircase. It leads up to the South Crater. I don’t think the stairs deserve this intimidating name. Bad tracks on which I might trip (common in NZ) seem much more devilish than the exertion of walking up well-cut stairs.

Roughly at the top of the stairs, near 1680 meters of elevation, I diverged right toward Ngāuruhoe. The complex terrain makes it hard to spot an impact track, if there is one. (I actually find walking through this sort of terrain enjoyable.)

Following instructions from previous blog posts, I trudged uphill to the easily visible lava rib protruding from the north of the mountain. I didn’t take a photo of the approach, but the photos below show it at my feet, contrasting with the tiny gravel and tiny red scoria to its sides.

I basically climbed the lava rib for a few hundred meters, occasionally stepping off into the soft loose tiny gray rock just right (true left; west) of it when I decided it was too hard to step over a large rock. Wearing gloves was important, because the surface is rough.

Some people report an unpleasant ascent. I suppose this is because they find the lava rib intimidating, and ascend the soft slopes instead. I didn’t find my ascent unpleasant, apart from my leg pain.

Eventually, the helpful lava rib ends. From there, I trudged uphill through soft red scoria to the gap between the full-circle inner crater and the semi-circle outer crater. There I found a natural windbreak, where I rested a while and deposited my backpack. To my surprise, there were many dozens of tiny crawling insects. They seemed harmless.

Fumarole on the outer crater.

There was at least one fumarole on the semi-circular outer crater. I don’t recall smelling sulfur, but someone else did.

Local Māori officials have declared the summit sacred, and ask people not to set foot on it. DOC considers the hike dangerous due to the crumbling rim of the inner crater, and asks people not to hike at all. It is quite a steep, loose last 50-60 meters, so I understand how someone could slip and roll, either back down the slope or, fatally, into the crater. Not carrying my backpack helped me here.

Descent

Descending the outside slope of the inner crater was painstaking because of its steepness. Then I collected my backpack and headed downhill.

Descending the rest of the mountain was surprisingly easy, despite my leg pain. It is the only descent in NZ that I would call fun, as opposed to the normal acceptable/unpleasant binary.

I chose the soft red scoria 2-4 meters to the true right (east) of the lava rib that I ascended. I don’t do scree runs - the reward doesn’t seem to justify the risk - but I did slide-step sideways fairly quickly down this section. I recall using one trekking pole, instead of both.
A few other bloggers descended true left (west) of the lava rib; I decided against this, because it looked somewhat boned out. In other words, I thought I could see some solid rock beneath the gray scoria/loose small rock. But I may have been tricked by loose small rock of a lighter shade of gray merely appearing to be solid rock from 5-10 meters away.

Eventually the fun loose red scoria gave way to more normal sloping terrain, so I slowed down and walked the rest of the way back to the Tongariro Crossing track. My boots were full of tiny rocks. I recommend wearing gaiters.

On my day, I was the only hiker. Here is a report from Ced, who had a worse experience, because of what may have been another hiker higher up dislodging a boulder:

While descending, a rock the size of a full-size fridge hurtled down a zigzag course at huge speed and missed my partner by less than a meter. I was below, and fell backwards down sharp scree in my attempt to avoid it, suffering multiple cuts. We were about 2/3 down. I presume it passed over me or close by. Don't climb this mountain if there are more than a tiny number of climbers. And consider a helmet.

Human-induced rockfall like this is the sort of risk that I would worry even more about on the much more popular Mt Taranaki.

If 1 is an easy track, and 4 is using hands and feet on exposed rocks, I give this track a 4 at worst. The slopes apart from the inner crater are mostly a 3 ascending or a 2 descending. The Tongariro Crossing portion is mostly a 1.

The first photo is from my Tongariro Crossing hike, which started hours earlier. For more photos from that hike, after it diverged from this hike, scroll down to the gallery below the external links section.