#turoa

2022_08_04

Our first time for snowboarding ~ amazing New Zealand ❤️ #turoa #mountruapehu #winter #snowboarding (at Tongariro National Park, New Zealand) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm-Gkm7gz3c/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1puofld52j26u

Experienced “first tracks” Saturday morning. It’s a time where you pay a little bit more to be the first few people on the mt before the lifts open to everyone at 9am. It was pretty awesome seeing the sun coming over the Mt at 830am and to also run on those freshies ❄️❄️🏂 (First pic you can see Mt Taranaki way way in the distance)

23rd June - Central: Mangakino to Okahune Heading south I was aiming for different roads than before, so I headed down from Mangakino around the west side of lake Taupo. There is a reason the East is the tourist drive! The west is a reasonably nice winding road through the farmland, but there's almost no lake views (I think because of the terrain not the weather, although the lake view I did get is mostly cloud!) I passed another nice power station lake up at Whakamaru, the entrance to a few hikes that would probably be nice on a dry day but otherwise not much. Further south it was back into National Park territory, but with the clouds still hanging low Ruapehu and Tongariro were virtually invisible. The rain was only getting worse, so I pretty much stuck to the driving down the west side of the park to an overnight camp at Raetihi where I took advantage of the indoors to hone my jigsaw skills (and avoid another night hanging out in the car!). The next morning was not exactly gloriously sunny, but the rain was spitting rather than pouring so I headed up the Okahune mountain road to the Turoa ski field. It's still closed due to lack of snow but there were a couple of waterfalls on the way up, one of which had a starring role in Lord of the rings (Gollum caught a fish there) and they were very pretty. The views would probably be fantastic on a clear day, but I mostly got cloud and rain then back into Okahune to stock up for the Whanganui river road.

Mountain Under Moonlight: Pt 2 Another image from the recent Queen's birthday weekend where we stayed at Ohakune, located just on the border of the Tongariro National Park. Here we've got Mount Ruapehu - Lit buy the light of the moon... #TongariroNationalPark #mountruapehu #turoa uroa #newzealand #ohakune (at Mount Ruapehu)

Mountain Under Moonlight: Pt 1 As you might have picked up from my last couple of posts, we've spent the long Queen's birthday weekend staying in Ohakune, located just on the border of the Tongariro National Park. On Saturday evening I took a drive up towards the Turoa skifield, located on the south western side of Mount Ruapehu, the North Islands highest mountain, and one of several active volcanos. It's around a 16km drive from Ohakune to the Turoa skifield, and along the way there are several stopping-off points to explore. Something which I aim to do at another time... As I approached Turoa, I came across this little hut which conveniently was being lit by moonlight. This image consisted of a single exposure lasting 15 seconds, an aperture of f2.8 and and ISO of 1250. I didn't linger too long at this spot as it was only 2 degrees celsius, so headed further up the mountain to see what I could see. #tongarironationalpark #mountruapehu #turoa #turoaskifield #newzealand #ohakune #moonlight (at Turoa)

I have so many special memories tied to Ruapehu and it is marginally spiritual to come back here off season and be the only person on the mountain.