Hiking New Zealand Volcanic Plateau

When to hike New Zealand Volcanic Plateau

All 5 destinations clear our recommendation criteria in every month of the year. The question here is not whether a place is open but how the months differ.

Averaged across the destinations, February is the warmest month at 18 degrees in the hiking window and July the coldest at 8. Every destination here is in the southern hemisphere.

How far apart the destinations are

The selected grid cells run from 139 metres at Coromandel to 1,334 metres at Tongariro, with a median of 400 metres. Both clear the criteria in 12 months (all year).

Season length is uniform here: every destination is recommendable in 12 months.

Conditions in March

March is when the open destinations score highest on average. Hiking-window temperature then runs from 12 degrees at Tongariro to 19 at Coromandel, and rain falls on 36 to 43 percent of days depending on the destination.

What these figures cover

Each destination is described by one selected ERA5-Land grid cell, averaged over 1991 to 2025. The figures above summarise those 5 cells. They are not a map of the whole area or of any route, and they are not a forecast.