Van trips to Ruapehu Lodge - the first of many

The Wellington Tramping & Mountaineering Club's Ruapehu Lodge is an absolutely fantastic place to see.  But we seem to be very good at keeping that fact a little to ourselves.  I thought I might have a go at changing that by seeing if I could find ways to try and get people up and into the place, who might not know about the Tramping Club.

So about a month ago I took the plunge with a lot of help and encouragement from Jaana, who helps organise the 'Wellington Tramping Group' on meetup.  Before I knew it she had me set up as an organiser and was giving me tips on how to get a trip up there.  So rapidly enough and with minimal effort, there I was on Friday afternoon meeting a vanload of punters from as far afield as Riga and Kilburnie, and all keen to ski and board and run and hike the marrow out of the mountain.

Everybody arrived at more or less the same time, so I introduced myself to a steady stream of people climbing into the van - Anita, Lihong, Inese, Christa... until Christa slightly sheepishly climbed out again and wandered over to the Adventure Wellington van that was loading a similar number of people heading the same way.

Traffic was heavy but not dramatically so, and 10pm saw us pulling into the Top of the Bruce car-park and offloading.  Other cars were sparse, and certainly we had the WTMC Lodge to ourselves.  I was expecting conditions to be grimly bare of snow but was pleasantly surprised.  We saw our first snow all the way down at Whakapapa Village, and while thin, there was a good base all around the Top of the Bruce and the lodges.  It's early days yet and couple of decent falls and the season will be rocking.

Saturday morning decided to ignore the MetService and dawn crisp, clear and blue-sky sunny.  People appeared from the bunkrooms and rapidly started cooking, demolishing and cleaning up after breakfast.  I slowly figured out what was around and brought it out so there were several courses, of toast, bacon, scrambled eggs, fried mushrooms (I found about 10kg of mushrooms and more mushrooms in the food locker!), baked beans, oats, weetbix, cornflakes and coffee.

We loaded ourselves into the van to leave Whakapapa with its 20cm of snow and head to Turoa with its 170cm of snow.  But as we were about to head off, we saw Christa and the Adventure Wellington team, again, driving up the ski road.  Whaa-?  I wandered over to chat to the Ruapehu crew who were herding the cars.  Turoa may have lots of snow but it was also being battered by high winds and was closed.  Gah!  So out of the van we piled again, and off to make the most of every millimeter of snow cover that was available to us.

The mountain grimly fought the MetService forecasters, but at 11:30am the clag rolled in and the temperature dropped.  Still, as long as you thought of being able to see as an unnecessary luxury, conditions were still breezy but liveable.

... and that's as far as I got with this post.  It was a great weekend with food, fun and hot pools, and the first of many great weekends to come.  The Ruapehu Lodge becomes a great deal more popular with van transport, that's for sure.