Going Tramping

View from close to the bottom of the trail
My tramping buddies- Mia and Gina, sisters from America. We all suffered together right til the bitter end!
On the edge, one of them.
Rugged terrain
Beautiful site, almost as nice as our Rockies
I found snow!

Red crater, amazing color

The Emerald Lakes, a group of 3 water filled explosion craters

You can see the trail coming down the mountain on the right that we followed down and we were only part way down when I took this picture!

I had to walk through some snow! It was so exciting after missing winter in Canada, I even made a snowball and threw it!


It's called 'Hiking' in Canada, 'Trekking' in Asia and 'Tramping' in NZ! I learnt this as I started a hike on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in the National Park. A guy casually asked me if I had done much tramping in NZ and he looked so serious I took a wild guess and said you mean hiking right?!

I spent a couple of days in the most peaceful National Park I have ever been to, it's probably like Banff was a hundred years ago, it was beautiful. After talking to many people I decided to do some tramping. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is considered one of NZs top hikes. It's 19.4 kms long over spectacular volcanic terrain and the highest point is 1886m. We started our tramp about 8am with some clouds but then it cleared to a beautiful sunny day which started melting their bit of snow they had gotten 2 nights earlier. We hiked up and down and around past craters, cliff sides, sulphur lakes and over rocky terrain and even down some soft volcanic dirt. Had picnics on rocks by the lakes and overlooking amazing valleys and got lots of great photos! It was the most amazing time! Until the last 3 kms.....hiking in rental boots to boot!

This was the longest and steepest hike I had ever done and the last 3 kms just about killed me, in fact I got past the pain and started to feel nothing at one time! We also had moments of unstoppable laughter at literally nothing but it sure took the thoughts off of our wobbly legs. I was never so thankful to see the end of a trail about 4pm, and collapsed once I got in the bus only to have to get off in 30 minutes and feel like I got put into some 100 year old persons body! I could hardly get off the bus let alone walk and was so embarassed but then looked at everyone else and they were all hobbling along the same!
None the less, 3 days later and still feeling the pain I can say it was totally worth it to see what we saw, go where we went and to say I conquered the Crossing! YAY!!