Name: New Zealand's Best Hike | Tongariro Alpine Crossing Travel Vlog
Uploaded: 2025-07-20T19:31:43.000Z
Duration: 17 min 26 s
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Today we have a pretty epic hike, 19.4 kilometers, 750 meter elevation gain.

Descent on the other side, we'll be going through an extremely volcanic landscape.

As we get through the day, I'll be letting you guys know a bit more about the history of the park, the cultural history, and the significance to the Maori people, and a couple more facts about the hike.

It's going to be a really fun, really long day.

The sun is just starting to crest over the fog bank behind us.

You can see one of the volcanoes in the background.

I think that's Nagaroi, a conical-shaped volcano.

You can see there's this huge fog bank, and the light is just slowly creeping in.

We're walking right now through kind of like a tussock, sort of just this high alpine scrub, and lichen, and little bushes, lots of purple flowers.

I don't know what they are, but they're beautiful.

If you do know what they are, please add that in the comments section.

We got into town late last night, so we didn't get to go to a proper grocery store, but we went into a gas station and found a lot of power bars.

There's also sandwiches, already packed sandwiches.

Right after I filmed that clip about being over-prepared instead of under-prepared, and all of our sandwiches.

Things happen, though, and sometimes we do forget things.

That is why being over-prepared is important, because we are over-prepared.

We have lots of other options, so we'll be okay.

The other two have been around for around 30,000 years, and they're the southernmost mountains or volcanoes in a string of volcanoes that go right up the center of the North Island and end up in the Bay of Plenty.

The last eruption took place in 1975, and one of the longest ones was in 1954.

You may recognize it if you're a Lord of the Rings fan.

Peter Jackson chose this mountain to be Mount Doom in Mordor, and you can see all of the remnants of pyroclastic flows and lava.

Volcanoes are some of the most interesting geological features that we have on this planet.

We kind of forget that we are sitting atop a giant molten rock core in the middle of this planet.

It's cool to see places that are geologically active because it really just shows what is happening on our planet on a larger scale.

Right now behind me with the morning light coming down, you can really see how active this volcano is.

We're right at the base of Mount Nagaroi.

I'm not tired, but I can definitely feel it.

It makes your breathing a little bit shorter.

It just kind of makes you want to take it steady instead of trekking up super quickly because you can feel it enhance as you climb.

All these valleys are essentially just chutes where pyroclastic flows, gas, rock from eruptions would come pummeling down here.

I don't know if you've heard of Pompeii, but that was a pyroclastic flow.

It essentially just froze everybody in time.

That's what we're hiking along right now.

All of this rock was put here in 1975 when the volcano exploded.

There was a big cloud of gas, rock, and ash came ripping down the mountainside and made the rough rock that we're walking along now.

So now that we're at the top plateau between the two volcanoes, I think it's time to talk a little bit about the mythology behind this place.

These volcanoes are considered tapu or sacred by the Maori people, and there's a really interesting kind of creation myth attached to this place.

Back in the day, a high priest called Nagatoro Irangi was in the region, and he wanted to claim this high volcanic plateau for his people, the area around Lake Taupo.

To get a better lay of the land, he decided to climb to the peak behind me.

And when he got to the top, a snowstorm whipped up out of nowhere, and being a Pacific Islander, he had never really experienced snow before, so he was worried for his life, and he called upon his other high priestesses up in the Bay of Plenty area to send him warmth.

They did that, but they did it in a creative way.

They sent fire from the ground, essentially a volcanic eruption, which created the crater back here and saved his life and claimed this place for his people.

Tangariro was the first national park in New Zealand.

It was made a national park in 1887 when the local chieftain of the Maori tribe essentially realized that the best way to protect this place was to offer it as a gift to the crown and ask for it to be protected.

It was the first one here in New Zealand, and it steadily grew in size from that initial gift to encompass almost 800 square kilometers now.

This is definitely one of the most popular national parks in New Zealand, especially because you can do this beautiful hike in a day.

Definitely when you come here, be respectful.

Do not leave trash or defecate on the trail, and just generally be respectful because this is a sacred place.

We're at 1,800 meters here, which may not sound like much, but this is one of the highest mountains on the North Island, and we made it.

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New Zealand's Best Hike | Tongariro Alpine Crossing Travel Vlog

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