Mt Ruapehu - August and September 2010

We made quite a few trips down to Mt. Ruapehu to snowboard this winter. This is Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. We figured it'd be easier to combine all the trips into a single post. Ruapehu is an active volcano, about a 5 hour drive from Auckland, that has major eruptions every 50 years or so. The last small eruption was in 2007. That isn't enough to stop the skiers! There's 2 ski resorts built on the volcano. Whakapapa and Turoa. We spent some time on each of them, but definitely prefer Turoa. The conditions are nothing like Canada. For starters, there isn't a single tree on either resort. It's also extremely windy. Ruapehu is basically a single mountain jutting out in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing to shield the wind. Both resorts are constantly stopping the lifts (if they open them at all) due to the wind.

Here's a few pics of the drive from Auckland to Mt Ruapehu. Don't mind the glare on the window...






The snow wasn't great, but that's what we were expecting. It was pretty wet and slushy every time we went. We were rained on every weekend we went too, but still had a lot of fun. We would normally stay in a hostel in Ohakune, the town closest to Turoa. We went about a dozen times and only had 1 really nice sunny day with fresh powder. Oh well, take what you can get I suppose!

The annual Vista Ski Trip (Jesse's work) was also at Mt Ruapehu. The company paid for the accommodation and booze, so it was a great time! The weather was typical-Ruapehu, but everyone had a blast. We also spent a weekend in a cabin up on Whakapapa with some of the crew that Carolina work with. Unfortunately the chair lifts were closed the entire weekend! Luckily there was a nice little cliff near the cabin, so we spent the afternoon building jumps at the bottom. The cabin had a few sleds in the storage area, so we took those out too. Who needs chairlifts anyways?

The view from a hostel we stayed at:

Here's the drive up to Turoa. If there is even a slight amount of ice on the road they completely close it! You are actually required to put chains on your tires and have pit-stop type things where you are forced to rent them (if you didn't bring your own) for $30, then they take them off at the end. What a cash grab! I suppose kiwis have no experience driving in snow, but I thought this was ridiculous. Even the streets in Calgary have more ice than here!

Waiting for the road to open... I'm not sure how often this happens (twice for us), but we had to sit waiting at the bottom of the hill waiting for them to open the road. This time it didn't open until about 10am.








We made it!!









Making a snow angel:

A very rare sight indeed, Fresh New Zealand Powder!

Here are some pictures from the other ski hill, Whakapapa:





One of the hostels we stayed at had a pet outside:


Almost all of the pictures up to now were taken on the single sunny day we had. This is what it normally looked like. This picture was taken at the base of the ski hill, further up there is no visibility at all.


A waterfall under the chairlift:


We didn't start our snowboarding season until late August, after we brought all our gear back from Canada. I think we missed out on the best ski conditions (July and early August). We're looking forward to going again next year. Plus we definitely need to check out some of the resorts on the South Island!