Bad Weather Up North

While the South Island gets a lot of the love for being the most beautiful and having the best hiking and scenery, the North Island still brings a lot to the table. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to show you too many cool pictures or tell you first hand stories about it. The weather has been absurdly cold and rainy.

So far we have been twice bitten by the weather. First we wanted to hike through a famous gorge, but arrived at its entrance to find that it was closed because a massive landslide had destroyed the area. Trying not to be too disappointed we continued on to Tongariro National Park. Home to dormant volcanoes and the mountain that you might know as “Mt. Doom” from Lord of the Rings, Tongariro also has the best one day walk in New Zealand. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is an epic 4 hour hike with ridiculous views, hot springs, and ancient volcanic terrain. 

Didn’t get to see it though….You see that rain we had been experiencing turned to wet snow on the summit. We were told that if we did attempt the crossing we would be facing 50 mph winds, extremely slippery ice from the snow storm, and zero visibility…..Oh yea, they have also been having to airlift stranded hikers off the crossing over the past week. We passed and are thankfully now on beautiful Lake Taupo enjoying the first sunshine we have had in over a week. Hopefully the weather cooperates and we can finish up this trip up with some nice weather.

First the gorge was closed.....

A completely empty holiday park. In the summer these were packed with vans. Everyone else has abandoned NZ

Beautiful NZ weather forecast

View of Lake Taupo with the rain

Same view but now with the sun. It looks nice but we could hike those mountains because
that is all ice and the winds up there are screaming

At least we get rainbows.....