Skiing

One of the best things about living in Auckland is that there's skiing four and a half hours away.

And one of the most annoying things about living in Auckland is that it's four and a half hours to skiing... it tempts you into thinking that you can ski for two days over a weekend, and somehow make it back to work on Monday without being completely exhausted. Which is not to say it's not worth it, as we've done it before, and no doubt we'll do it again...

We last went down to Ruapehu at the end of last season we skied at Turoa, on the south side of the mountain. This time we also spent a day at Whakapapa, on the north side, which has a more Alpine character, and a view of Mount "Doom" Ngauruhoe.

The weather was fantastic, although the snow was pretty icy. We tried a couple of the blacks, but many of them were just ice sheets under a small covering of powder. We ignored the "extreme terrain" signs only the once... and the double-blacks were entirely cordoned off.

Disclaimer: geological activity may affect features on this map

The New Zealand ski season is surprisingly long, so last weekend we headed down to Mount Ruapehu for a weekend of skiing on an (active) volcano. The weather the first day needed a little improvement - visibility was low, to say the least. But on the second day the forecast of unlimited visibility held true and much good skiing was there to be had:





There are several differences between skiing on the Alps or the Rockies, and skiing on an active volcano. First of all, especially this late in the season, when much of the snow has melted, it looks somewhat like you're skiing on the moon. There are warnings signs about what one should do in the case of an eruption (the last major eruption was in about 1995), and you have in the back of your mind the strange knowledge that the aforementioned geological activity is not on the timescale to which we are usually accustomed.