Snow Holiday 2011

Last weekend I took a day off work to make a nice long weekend to go away and enjoy some fun at the snow. We just picked a fairly random weekend after the school holidays, and it happened to be a very good one: the week before was the biggest cold snap of the winter and one of the coldest in years... which means lots of snow! The forecast for Saturday was "cloud, clearing", so we decided
not to hurry down, rather having breakfast at home and getting down to Whakapapa for lunch before heading up the mountain for the afternoon. By the time we got to the village, there were thousands of people around, because of the sunshine and recent snow. The road up the mountain was closed because all the carparks were full, but we were let through to get to Scoria Flat - roughly halfway up the mountain. It's usually a spot where you can fit chains if required, but was being used as a carpark so they could get more people up the mountain. We had lunch there and then caught a shuttle bus up to the top. The weather was perfect, so we got a few toboggan runs in. The sliding area this year was much longer than last year,

and shaped reasonably nicely - it was also faster than last year. We tried to get Ben to go by himself on the toboggan, but the first run he did, he got smashed in the ribs by someone else on an out of control toboggan. So he didn't feel like sliding again by himself. The kids also made a snow man with a carrot nose that had been specially brought all the way from Hamilton!

Sunday morning was fine and cold (got down to -7.6C in the village where we were staying apparently!) so after some breakfast we headed up the mountain again. We were early enough to get a park this time, although we were down in carpark #10, so it was easier to catch the shuttle bus up from there than get the kids to walk up! There was a light breeze blowing, which made it rather icy. After a few toboggan runs

the kids were feeling rather tired - a combination of the cold and not-particularly-good night's sleep. Ben and I went for a little bit of a walk up the other side of Happy Valley to explore, and then it was time for some lunch. Everyone was exhausted, so we just went back down the mountain to have a rest in the cabin. After a rest, we went for a walk down to the stream behind the holiday park (where we had a snowball fight!) and a short walk around the village which we'd never done before.

Monday morning was time to pack up - we'd had a much better night's sleep, so we got packed up and back up the mountain for yet another day of perfect sunshine, this time without any wind. Being a weekday, there were far less people around, so we had some nice quiet runs on the toboggan (this time Ben did go by himself, although he still fell off each time!). Mel was feeling a bit weary after walking back up the hill a few times, so I took all three kids for a walk again. Ben said he would show Joanna how to climb the icy mountain, because he was a big boy! We all managed to fall over and slip a little bit on the way up, but got to a nice spot to look down on the ski slopes. And then Ben decided to keep exploring and then found that he could slide down some of the nice smooth icy stuff on his bottom. Joanna thought that was a grand idea, so she joined in.

And Naomi in the backpack on my back was bouncing up and down, wanting to join in. After that we just had lots of fun climbing ever higher, finding nice spots to slide down on our bottoms! We had a couple of final toboggan runs before heading home (and Ben slid the whole way down by himself, without falling off!).

After lunch, it was time for the drive back home, along with a stop at Over the Moon Dairy in Putaruru to get some yummy cheese... and some rest to recover!

The flickr set has lots more photos, and the videos on there are also pretty funny!