Tongariro - Climbing Mount Doom

The side of the mountain is basically a scree slope - This is little bits of gravel so you end up sliding back down a little with each step. Really quite tricky to do this and uses up a lot of energy. The only saving grace is the fact that there is a rocky ridge that leads up to the area with red rocks - You can clamber up over those rocks and make some progress. It is quite scary and whenever I stopped to take some photos the view straight back down was a bit worrying, the wind had picked up so there were some strong gusts to contend with as well. Picture - The Rocky ridge is on the left hand side leading up to the red rocks. The rest of it is scree.