Tongariro Crossing

The Tongariro Crossing is known to be one of the best day hikes in the world. It is very weather dependant and thankfully we had a nice day on the day we decided to do it. It is a 17km hike through a volcanic area with two volcanos that you can climb up. We caught a 7am shuttle to the start of the crossing. We hiked for about 2.5 hours, with 1.5 of that being straight up. The area is called the devils staircase. After this climb we still had 11.5km to hike, however we had lots of time so we decided to do a 3 hour side trip up Ngauruhoe Volcano. This was probably the hardest 3 hours of hiking I have ever done. It literally was up the side of the volcano, which thankfully was not active. We climbed and scrambled for 2 hours until we finally reached the top. At the top we could see the big crater, and see the other volcano, Mount Ruapehu(Mt. Ngauruhoe is in the picture-the big one in the rear), in the background. We could also see the Emerald Lakes, which are small lakes that are super blue and super clear because they are very acidic. Looking back now, it was worth the climb but at the time I was SO tired!!! It was neat being on the side of a volcano though! It then took us (well me) an hour to get down. Adam ran and "skied" down on the skree, but I took a more lady like approach and slide down on my butt most of the way.
After this climb up, we still had the 11.5 km to hike. This part was very interesting terrain, unlike any of the hikes we have done. It was all rock and very barren. Thankfully the last bit was not too hard and we caught the 4pm shuttle back to our campsite. In total, we hiked/climbed for 8.5 hours straight!! Needless to say we were very tired, however we did enjoy the crossing.