Volcanic snowboarding

On Saturday I went up to Mt. Ruapehu, the main mountain for skiing and snowboarding on the north island. It happens to be a live volcano and has a tropical rainforest all the way around it. I went with Amanda, who I’m staying with and her boyfriend. We left at 3:30am to get there and get our gear rented and be ready to rock right when the lifts opened at 8am. The mountain was amazing, with some fresh snow and not too many people, even though it was the last weekend of school holidays. I used all of the lifts, trying out a lot of runs. The top of the mountain had an amazing view of the mountain below going into the clouds with another mountain off in the distance. A couple of black diamond runs took me down to the middle of the mountain where the wait was less time. Good times throughout the whole day, only falling a few times and getting some good speed. We turned in our tickets at 12:30 to get the half the money back and headed back to Wellington, driving down the mountain, through the rain forest and onto the highway. The highway is the main one between Auckland and Wellington with the mountain in the middle. Hilariously, this main highway has to cross train tracks which will stop traffic if a train is coming and normal traffic has to go 25kph.

Pumped to be heading up

Halfway up, past the lake and clouds

Great day with hardly any wind

The view up towards the top of the volcanic mountain