Don’t leave gear without surveillance at the train station! That’s the lesson we learnt almost the hard way on the Friday.
As per usual with a WTMC trip, we were at Wellington Train Station faffing and loading the van, waiting for people to arrive and had some gear lying around – not really paying close attention to it… and in the blink of an eye, the ice axe bag had disappeared – with three axes in it!
Luckily, Mike walked around platform 9 and quickly found the culprit, who claimed innocence. They said they thought it was no-one’s bag (!), but promptly returned it without further issues…
After this eventful start, the only thing we were dearly missing was our leader. Emily had done all the organising, but unfortunately was grounded in town for the weekend with a nasty cold. Things fell into place as we left Wellington though, with a smooth drive North and a customary dinner stop at Bulls, arriving at the the club’s lodge at around 10.30pm.
Saturday
We had a relatively leisurely start for an alpine trip, leaving the lodge at 7.30am. After a fair bit of scrambling on rocks, the snow started covering the ground more consistently from the NZAC Ruapehu Hut – at about 2,000m elevation.
From there we got the ice axes out, but continued without crampons for a while: the snow was surprisingly powdery and dry, on top of a firm layer – making for easy travel. Some South-East facing aspects had a much firmer/icier sub-layer, and as we made our way up a spur and around some bluffs, a steeper section called for front-pointing. And at this point it seemed like the right time to put crampons on. We then made our way up towards the top of Whakapapa Ski Field, with views of Mt Taranaki to our right and Mt Ngauruhoe to our left.
Aiming for the saddle, we walked up Whakapapa Glacier and noticed signs of loose superficial wet slab on either side – consistent with the avalanche forecast. Catching a glimpse of Crater Lake called for Lunch #1 and a photo stop, before sidling up Dome to get even better views of Summit Plateau and the surrounding peaks.
We ran into two of Alistair’s friends who seemed to be having an equally great time on the tops, as well as an NZAC group. This was our first of many encounters with familiar faces this weekend.
After taking a quick look at the Plateau, we found a spot sheltered from the wind for Lunch #2, soaking up the sunshine and views.
Before getting too cold, we packed up our lunch and started heading downhill – this required a little bit of creativity to avoid some bluffs and steeper sections. The snow was still soft and powdery, and a few of us soon ditched our crampons, hoping to trade walking for bum-sliding – attempts in the soft snow were more or less successful.
As we reached the NZAC Ruapehu hut, we decided to stop for a bit of self-arrest practice. And so had the rest of the mountain! A LandSAR group was running an avalanche awareness course – including one of Phoebe’s friends, and there were also two snow craft courses underway. We quickly ran into Jon and James – who were instructing a NZAC snow craft level 1 course. This did not distract us from self-arrest practice though, and we enthusiastically slid down feet first, head first or on one’s back or tummy enough times to be completely disorientated!
There was still a bit of rock scrambling to do, but we quickly made our way back to the WTMC Lodge, where we were treated to yet another fantastic sunset, with snacks and dinner soon to be served: roast chicken and veggies + choice of carrot and/or choc cake for dessert. Yum.
Approx times: About 4 h 30 mins each way without rushing (including breaks and practice).
Sunday
We decided on an easy trip to stretch our legs before heading home to Wellington. Alistair was keen to bag a new hut and we opted for a stroll along the Whakapapaiti Circuit. The EM group kindly dropped us off at the top of the track, and we gently made our way around to Whakapapa Village in a bit less than 4 hours – with some cool ice formations, frozen tarns and lovely views of Mt Ruapehu, Mt Hauhungatahi and Mt Ngauruhoe.
