A month or so ago, a friend of mine J and his partner S mentioned that they had access to a place up on Mt Ruapehu. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Mount Ruapehu, or just Ruapehu, is an active stratovolcano at the southern end of the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand. It is 23 kilometres northeast of Ohakune and 40 kilometres southwest of the southern shore of Lake Taupo, within Tongariro National Park. The North Island's major skifields and only glaciers are on its slopes.
Well that certainly sounds good. It's home to the two major Ski fields: Whakapapa and Turoa. Their accommodations were on the Whakapapa side. I really didn't know what to expect, and, as has become the norm, what I experiences was completely out of my normal understanding of a skiing weekend.
First off, Tongariro National park is a world heritage site, and for good reason. It's completely unique and epic to drive through. The desert road (which I've mentioned before) Lake Taupo the mountains and of course Ruapehu all make for a great setting.
Now, being that the hill is a national park, and happens to also be Maori sacred land, the usual rules around developing don't apply. For one, commercial space is very difficult to get. As a result there are VERY few hotels and none particularly inexpensive. Kiwis, however as is the norm, have come up with a pragmatic solution.
Various clubs (alpine, social, university) have, throughout the years petitioned the Department of Conservation for permission to build Club Huts. The one I was in happened to be one of the earliest examples, run by the Alpine Sports Club of New Zealand, however, there's probably another 30 or so Huts at the base of Whakapapa.
The way it works is that members of these clubs, after paying a yearly rate, can have accommodations for cheap. The benefits, other than a roof over your head, is that breakfast and dinner are included. This was all I was told.
When we got there, I learned the rest of the details. We were 4 to a room, in comfortable bunk beds. We all were assigned basic chores every day, some doing dinner, some doing dishes, etc. and it was all a very relaxed communal without being commune feel to it. There were families, singles, couples. I visited another Hut that a few work friends were staying at and it was all the same. After my last communal experience (Raglan) this was an great change. People were very mellow about the whole thing. it was a very convenient means to an end, and made for a great weekend.
Saturday morning I was awoken by a teen age girl and her 4-8 year old assistants delivering coffee, tea or hot chocolate in bed to all the club members. This was one of the chores :). A filling breakfast of poached eggs, sausages, toast and Spaghetti from a tin (!!!) and it was time to hit the slopes. From looking at the maps, I could see that there was a decent selection of chairs and T-Bars. There wasn't that much snow at the base, so we'd be dealing with rocks. It was then that I realized the second outcome of the national park being a sacred and protected area. None of the land the ski runs were on could be modified in any permanent way. And, as this was a volcano with giant ash boulders, lava flows etc. That meant completely alien terrain on which to ski.
The run topology changes drastically depending on how much snow is on the hill. If there's tons, you're skiing on wide open ranges with some nice undulations. Last weekend however, as there was only a minimum base, we were playing dodge the sharp pointy rocks and had to contend with some deep gulleys, icy conditions and occasional "surprise" rocks taking chunks out of the base of our gear. It wasn't unpleasant in the slightest, it reminded me a lot of spring skiing in Canada.
Which of course brings me to the weather. The mountain is fickle. We started our day around 9:00am, it was approx -2, sunny and looking great. The day heated up and in doing so changed the snow from ice to soft snow. from about 11 to 1 the conditions were glorious.
From about 1:30 onwards the clouds came and covered the mountain completely, and, being over the cloud line, the light went completely flat. So flat in fact that despite specialty goggles, I still had a hard time picking my way down the hill.
Which is just as well, because, after 5 years without snowboarding, my body was ready to pack it in after 5 hours. See, in New Zealand, despite their complaints of long lift lines, you really are only waiting a maximum of 10 minutes to get on the chair. Throughout the weekend we had to queue exactly twice. The runs were about the length of most Laurentian ski fields so we got a fair number of runs in in the end.
We headed back to the Hut where the crew prepared a 3 leg of lamb meal with roasted vegetables and apple pudding. We ate too much, had a few beers and generally relaxed.
The weather settled in for the rest of the weekend, and, by Sunday morning it was raining, +2 to +5 and visibility was about nil. As we had a 4.5 hour drive ahead of us, we decided to call it a success, having had a brilliant day on the slopes.
** An interesting side note, Ruapehu has been most active since 1995, with an eruption in 95, another in 2006, a lahar in 2007(basically a run of boiling acidic water from the lake that's in its crater) another eruption in 2008. Needless to say, they take mountain safely *very* seriously. See the wikipedia article linked above for more info.
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