The Tongariro Crossing is billed as the best one day hike in New Zealand. We decided that since we were too wimpy to go trekking overnight, the next best thing was the Crossing.

The Tongariro Crossing track passes over varied and spectacular volcanic terrain. In the presence of active volcanoes you can experience some of Tongariro National Park’s special gifts. A cold mountain spring, lava flows, an active crater, steam vents, emerald-coloured lakes and magnificent views combine to make this an enjoyable and memorable trip.
(Department of Conservation website)

A rickety old bus picked us up at the tourist information office at 7:30am and drove us to the start of the walk. It was misty and chilly, but the beautiful alpine flowers and the stunning droplet covered spiderwebs distracted us from the gradual climb...

... for the first half hour! After that, it was scrambling up lava flows for 4 hours. We made it up the Devil's Staircase to Soda Springs (took about an hour and a quarter) and paused at the outhouses to recharge with chocolate and water. I gazed up in dread at the mountain towering in front of us. I looked at the map. We were just at the beginning. Once we were in the south crater, all vegetation was gone, we were in a landscape that looked like another planet. The ground steamed, the rocks were red and yellow and the clouds swirled above us blocking the view of the mountain peaks. It was truly unreal, and startlingly beautiful.

We continued climbing and climbing and kept climbing. After about 4 hours I was totally exhausted and my asthma was acting up. We only had one more stretch of climbing to go, but I had to stop every 100 steps in order to calm my wheezing. We met an older woman on the trail who was puttering up the track. She had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, and said that it was easier than the Tongariro Crossing. We did make it to the top of the track, but decided to forego the chance to do the side trip to the very top of the peak.

Once we got to the Red Crater we figured it was all downhill from there... and it was... except for a few small uphill bits. We saw the stunning Emerald Lakes - three sulphur-bottomed crater lakes that shimmer bright green - and the Blue lake (also a crater lake). Dad kept joking about how they were going to build cottages around it, but apparently it's sacred to the local Maori tribes who donated the land to the people of New Zealand to keep it as a national park. So cottages aren't happening any time soon.

We walked down and down, through miles of tussock covered mountainside, and finally reached the Ketetahi hut. At that point Dave hit the wall and all of us were exhausted - we'd been hiking for 6 hours and we still had 2.5 hours to go. The trail wended it's way down through more tussock that gradually blended into shrubbery and forest. The last few kilometers our knees screamed in pain as we continued down the thousands of steps to the parking lot.

The bus was waiting for us when we finally arrived at the end of the track. We were sore, thirsty (we'd taken 6 bottles of water and finished them all), tired and sunburnt. I realised at that point that I had forgotten to put any sunscreen on the small gap between my socks and thermals - leaving me with a severly burned stripe around each ankle.

We hobbled back to the cottage and after a lovely soak in the thermal pools collapsed into bed. We deserved a good lie in the next day - after all we had walked 17.5km, climbed 1000 metres and descended 1300 meters all in one day. That was definitely the most challenging hike I've ever been on. But boy, was the view worth it! (Go look at the photos! Go! Now!)