Tahurangi

A 5 am Friday morning departure from Wellington had myself and Max arriving at the Mountain Road gates just as they were opened for the day after gritting for the drive up the wintery road, rising up through the thick, snow dusted bush to the Turoa ski field.

Ruapehu (Tahurangi the highest point on the left) and the distant and instantly recognisable conical Ngauruhoe behind.

Taranaki and the west coast of the North Island from the ski field. I don't think I've ever been anywhere so high above everything else around it.

Sidling from the skifield car park to check out the ice falls of Mangatuturu Cirque. Unfortunately their relatively low altitude meant that they weren't quite climbable so had to resort to a second and yet to be determined plan.

Max climbing the west slopes of Te Ataahu, a peak of the crater rim, directly up from where we had checked out the cirque. Not mentioned in the guidebook, we decided to head up on a line straight through a series of rime cliffs.

Tim topping out a rime bluff, the Turoa ski field below.

Rising traverse under the rime bluffs

Max boldly climbing through the biggest of the rime cliffs. It turned out the rime was not stuck to the rock but was rather the outer crust of soft snow making the climbing quite necky.

On reaching the crater rim we had a fantastic view of the crater lake and the other peaks of the rim. At one point you could go for a dip in the warm lake, but a relatively recent erruption has left the water acidic.

The snow ridge up to Tahurangi, Mount Ruapehu's highest point.

Max on the final summit slopes of Tahurangi.

Next to the summit of Tahurangi, the highest point of the North Island and the highest I've yet been in NZ. A reminder of climbing an active volcano is the strong smell of sulphur.

Looking north across the crater lake with Lake Taupo behind.

Max descending from the summit, Girdlestone on the left. The summit was calm but you can just see the plume of snow as the wind accelerated over the col only a few metres below that which prompted a quick descent through a bombardment of spindrift down the slopes on the right.

We descended through the ski field via the Broadbent waterfall. The main, free hanging flow itself hadn't touched down yet but the shorter steep fall to the right provided a bit of sport as the sun set. Then it was back down to the car park through the 'blizzard' of snow machines preparing for the opening of the ski field the next day and down to Ohakune to meet Kevin and Helen coming up from Wellington. We had had the mountain and the ski field to ourselves. Quite a contrast to the next day and the offical opening of the ski season.