A 19-kilometre crossing of New Zealand's most active volcanic plateau, past the otherworldly Emerald Lakes, through lava fields, and beneath the slopes of Mount Ngauruhoe.
The Maori regard Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu as ancestors — tupuna — not metaphorically but literally, as living beings with genealogy, personality, and mana. The volcano system was gifted to the New Zealand government in 1887 by the Maori paramount chief Horonuku Te Heuheu Tukino IV, on the explicit condition that it be protected in perpetuity. It became the first national park in New Zealand and the fourth in the world.
The Alpine Crossing traverses this sacred landscape across 19 kilometres in a single day, climbing through tussock grassland to the South Crater — a vast flat plain of lava and ash at 1,800 metres — then past the active vents of Mount Ngauruhoe, which last erupted in 1975 and which Peter Jackson used as the visual template for Mount Doom. The crossing descends via the most photographed section: the Emerald Lakes.
Three explosion craters hold hydrothermal water tinted green and turquoise by dissolved minerals — silica, iron, and sulfur — at a pH of approximately 3.5. The colours shift through the day as light angle changes. Steam rises from vents in the crater walls. The ground around them is stained yellow and white from sulfur deposits.
The landscape beyond the lakes descends through the Blue Lake — sacred Maori water, forbidden to touch or drink — and through a red lava field before the forest boundary. In 8 hours of walking, you cross from one geological era to another: through raw, recent volcanic landscape into ancient temperate forest.