The Desert Road

State Highway 1 across the Rangipo Desert, about 62 km of tussock, scrub and sand beneath Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro, cresting at 1,074 m, the highest pass on New Zealand’s state highway network.

From the SH 49 junction at Waiouru, by the National Army Museum, SH 1 heads north through the army training ground that covers much of the southern Rangipo Desert. Farmland gives way to tussock, scrub and sand, with Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro to the west and the Kaimanawa Mountains to the east, and the road rises to its summit at 1,074 m, where the Manawatū-Whanganui and Waikato regions meet. Further north it crosses the Waihohonu Stream and, near the end of the desert, opens a view of the cone of Ngauruhoe with the flatter Tongariro to its right. Past the Tree Trunk Gorge Road turn-off the highway drops off the volcanic plateau through Rangipo to Tūrangi. There are no official lookouts or public toilets, only roadside pull-overs, and the last fuel is at Waiouru and Tūrangi. Barrier arms close the road for short periods most winters when snow and ice take hold, as they did on 17 August 2026.