She'll be coming round the mountain.....

With a week of the school holidays complete it was time to head off to explore more of New Zealand. The plan was to head off at first light Saturday and drive down to the snowfields on the slopes of the Mount Ruapehu. Unfortunately the rain hadn’t stopped all night and had woken us up several times, by 5am we were peering over the weather and skiing forecast web sites to see if we should just go back to bed and give up on the idea. By 5.30am we decided that even if it was going to continue to rain we might as well set off, so we got the girls up and by the time it got light at 6:15am we were driving down Highway 3 towards Te Awamutu. Miraculously the rain had stopped and as we headed south passed some dramatic and lush hills we could even see the occasional patch of blue sky.

Two and a half hours in we passed the turn-off to a spiral loop on the main railway which allows the trains to climb up onto NZ’s central plateau. As we arrived at National Park (which is a place name) as well as the entry point to the Tongariro National Park we could see the sun shining on the snow on Mount Ruapehu. The Photo shows what the resort was called - 'Wh' in Maori is pronounced 'F'....

He white fuel guzzling Nissan (which is now averaging 20 mpg and rattles at 90kph!) slowly got us up to the ski area and we donned the warm clothes that our good (and only) friends Nola and Dean had lent us. Not being skiers we signed up for a beginners class and togged up with skis, boots, sticks (except Lana), sun glasses and hats we descended the chair lift into the Happy Valley nursery slope. The slope is in a gully on the side of the mountain, there were sobering warnings posted just above the urinals informing the any gung-ho skiers that these gullys were channels for the mud and lava flows should the mountain decide to erupt whist we were skiing- Mount Ruapehu being an active volcano which seems to do something every 10-20 years. The advice was to get out of the gully if you heard the Eruption Detection sirens – there was also a disclaimer saying the Eruption Detection system was not 100% reliable – enough to distract you from the purpose of your visit (see above to remind yourself of where the poster was displayed).

Anyway, we lined up with our instructor Georgia who in two hours soon had us sliding, snowploughing, falling over, bunny hopping and taking part in a slow-motion slalom. Lana was the star pupil having skied for an hour at the Milton Keynes Snowdome – anyway we were let loose on the gentle Happy Valley slope and for the next three hours we made our way down the hill (I fell over on every descent) and more scarily (especially for Kirsten) we zipped back to the top on the chair lift. It was rather like running round to have another go of the slide at the children’s playground in Warwick! Not only did I fall down on the way down but I also fell over every time I tried to ski off the top of the chair lift – much to Lana’s amusement.

Despite the horrendous weather forecast we had bright sunshine until we packed away at 3pm – no broken bones, but sunburnt noses and a warm glow that we had all managed to ski for a bit without making complete fools of ourselves.

As we drove away we got the first proper sight of nearby Mount Ngauruhoe which I’d seen from the air a couple of week before. It is a truly awe inspiring view and apparently has one of NZ’s best one day walks across it, there is also a 42km mountain bike trail nearby – one for me to go back to I think.

Driving back we stopped at the Huku Falls at the outlet of Lake Taupo. The long channel made for the world’s fastest game of Pooh Sticks (less than 1 second) with the whole Waikato river leaving the raging ravine and dropping into a broad river to head north past Hamilton and off to the Tasman Sea. The Lake was formed when 750km3 of volcano (culdera actually) blew its top 26,500 years ago – If my A Level maths serve me right that is enough ash to put a 5mm layer over the whole planet – I think it is one of the largest eruptions ever recorded.

We had thought of staying over a night and skiing again on Sunday but I think we made a good choice returning on Saturday as there was a dump of 50cm of snow on the Sunday and many of the roads were closed and over 100 cars were abandoned on one of the roads out of Taupo.

Sunday rained (surprise surprise) so whilst Lana and Chris went to the Waikato Home & Garden Show Kirsty and I ventured back to Mitre10 DIY Heaven to check out the sit on mowers. Apparently the 22HP 42” Whyte model comes with a free trailer and a mulching plug as well as a hose attachment to automatically wash the three sets of blades…….. Sounds just the job. Added to this its cutting deck is linked to the cast iron front axle so it lifts over uneven ground. It was a good job Kirsty was taking all this info in as I was flummoxed……

So there we have another weekend down under........ house buying still progressing scarily well.

Richard