Ngauruhoe and Taranaki revisited

Brother Thor is visiting at the moment and I wanted to show him a few of the gems of skiing on the North Island: Ngauruhoe and the 'Naki. With two days off from work and a decent high pressure system everything lined up perfectly. Ling joined us too.

Day 1: 

Ngauruhoe north slopes via the  usual walk in the Mangatepopo valley and up to South Crater. Nice corn snow.

After a sweet but relatively short ski descent (snow line is around 1600metres at the moment), we got in the car and drove over to Taranaki via the Forgotten World Highway. The 4 hour drive over on the windy road featured hitting a possum and a hare in the car, a flat tyre on one of the unsealed sections of the road and one of the dirtiest burgers I've ever had the pleasure of eating from a chinese takeaway store in Stratford. We camped out for the night in a carpark just below the North Egmont visitor centre.

Day 2:

The day started with a breakfast of espresso and a few gingernuts. Then we set out walking up to the Tahurangi lodge and were soon in the clouds with visibility down to about 30 metres, we decided to continue up in the hope that we would climb above the clouds.

Sure enough, at about 2000 metres we were clear of the whiteout and enjoyed some terrific views over a sea of clouds.

The skiing was undoubtedly the best I've had this season in NZ, perfect corn and a steady slope angle of 35°. Good times indeed. The spring skiing season is officially opened.