Volcano Skiing

The girls’ winter break came at the end of July, just as I was finishing the first draft of my fellowship paper. We drove 4ish hours up to Mount Ruapehu in the center of the North Island and is Mordor in Lord of the Rings. It’s an active volcano and host of two ski fields, as they call them here.

After climbing Taranaki (another of the volcanoes, in the distance above) in March with the Hutt Valley Tramping Club, we joined the club and got access to their Mount Rupehu Ski hut. Mount Rupehu is dotted with similar huts owned by clubs from all over New Zealand. Ours has a huge bunk room that accommodates about 32 people, if everyone sleeps head to toe (i.e. two people/bed – really). Luckily for us, the hut wasn’t at full capacity when we visited and we each got our own bunk.

The communal living was fun. There were 9 children between the ages of 6-12 and their various parents cooking breakfast and dinner together and then meeting on the slopes.

We had stunning weather, warm enough at mid-day to picnic and clear skis so that we cot great views of the other surrounding volcanoes. Claire and Eleanor had never skied before so we signed them up for ski school and they took to it like naturals. Perhaps they learned too quickly. As I was skiing down the Rock Garden slope to pick up the girls from their lesson, I noticed a familiar hat on a small head coming down the mountain behind a ski patrol in a toboggan. Turned out to be Eleanor. On her third day of skiing, she’d taken a jump too fast and twisted her knee.

It was twisted badly enough to keep her off the slopes, but not so badly that she needed an orthopedic intervention. John was happy to hang out with her at the hut the following day as he’d hurt his shoulder a bit the day before.

On our fourth day, Claire was getting good enough to brave the upper mountain, where we could get occasional whiffs of sulphur from the volcano top. After several successful rides on the T-bar, we fell off on an especially steep bit, with me tumbling over her several times before we stopped on the edge of a cliff with Claire laying face down unable to move. Fears of a broken back swirling in my mind were interrupted by a knowledgeable good Samaritan who came to our aid and calmly got Claire to wiggle appropriately and isolated that her problem was shocked surprise and a damaged wrist. Ski patrol and toboggan # 2 for our Ruapehu stay brought Claire to the bottom where an x-ray showed a possible hairline fracture in her wrist – her third.



Given the forecast for rain the following day and that by now I was the only one still skiing, we headed back to Wellington in awe of, but yet enamored by Ruapehu.