Mt. Ruapehu
Trip Start
Jan 11, 2008
1
4
16
Trip End
Feb 22, 2008
Whakapapa Village,
New Zealand
Friday, January 18, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Ruapehu
We slept in til 7am, a much needed sleep! It was a 6.5 km hike uphill along the road to the base of Mt. Ruapehu, so we managed to get to van to bring us up the to the base for a few bucks. Mt. Ruapehu was a ski hill in the winter, and there were chairlifts there that would start operating in the summer at 9am, and would go up the first 400m of the mountain. The trail after that was unmarked to the top. We were there before 9am so we decided to start hiking up, our legs actually feeling pretty decent without packs and after a carbo loading dinner the night before. We made it to the top of the chairlifts after an hour, with a few groups passing over our heads on the chairlift. We started up the mountain along a marked trail, only after 20 min realizing that this was not the trail to the summit, so we cross countried our way over some ridges and snow bowls to a ridgeline that looked from our map to be the correct line up the mountain
01) Hiking up Mt. Raupehu
. We had somehow managed to pass some other groups heading up as well, and we were determined to be the first ones to the summit! Through a large snowbowl up the volcanic rocks to the summit, total time up 2.5hrs from the base! The views were amazing, Mt. Ngaurahoe to the north, which we had climbed days before, and a huge crater with a ridge around it to the Dome emergency shelter at the top of the summit. The clouds were moving in, but we had great views of a huge pea green lake with fumes coming off a it, with yellow sulfur streaks throughout.
We ate our lunch and took in the views, and after an hour the next couple of groups of day hikers made their way to the summit. A man had died on the summit the day before, he and his wife had just flown in from Hungary a few days before and he had a massive heart attack near the summit. A park staff guide was looking over the area where he and his partner had performed CPR on the gentleman, because apparently a roll of film had fallen out and the man's wife really wanted to find it. We helped the guide scour the area a bit but no sign of the black roll of film among the black lava rocks.
After a while it became apparent that the weather that had moved in was not going to leave, so we made our way down the mountain, boot skiing our way down where we could! We took the chairlift down for the last 400m, taking in the panoramic views. At the base we hoped to hitch a ride, but not many people were leaving the mountain, so we started walking. It was easy walking down hill in the overcast sky, so we didn't try to hitchhike, although a man and his son did offer us a ride about 2km outside of town and we gladly took it!
Back to the hotel for food and drink (we managed a whole bottle of wine when yesterday we were drunk on one beer!) and laundry, bags all packed for the next day when we would make our way to Auckland for a couple of days of rest and relaxation!
