Magnificent Mt Ruapehu (again!)

It's that time of year again - time for Mel and the kids to go to Brisbane, and me to go up a mountain!  Last year I had a fantastic trip up Mt Ruapehu, camping up near the top.  I enjoyed it so much that I went and did it again... so here's the report.

We left Hamilton nice and early, intending to get to the chairlifts shortly after they opened.  Once up at Knoll Ridge (~2000m asl), we headed up towards the Pinnacle Ridge for a slightly more technical and hopefully more spectacular route up to the Plateau.  On the way up, I thought it would be good to cut up on top of the ridge early... which wasn't a good idea.  I ended up slipping and sliding down the ice for about 30m before my ice axe finally gripped and stopped me.  I did manage to lose a bit of skin on my elbows and left hand though.

Once we got higher up, the clouds started rolling in and swallowed us up before we'd managed to find the Tukino-Te Heu Heu saddle that we were aiming for.  We kept on going up and managed to find it without falling off the cliffs on the other side. We popped up on to Tukino Peak, seeing absolutely nothing in the clouds, and then descended down the ridge towards the plateau.  There were a couple of other groups there - one in a tent, the other attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to dig a snow cave.  We set our tents up and got some hot food going, before going to bed with the plateau still enveloped in cloud.  It was certainly cold, but probably not quite as cold as last year (so maybe only -10C or something!).  There was a bit of a breeze blowing during the night, but when I poked my head out before dawn, it was perfectly clear, so I hopped out and went for a walk around, taking photos.
After breakfast and packing up, I pulled out the cricket set, just for a bit of craziness!  One of the snow-cavers couldn't believe his eyes but absolutely loved the idea.  After that, Sebastian and I popped back up to Tukino Peak to see the views that we'd missed out on the day before in the cloud (wow!), before we headed back down to Knoll Ridge via the relatively easy Restful Ridge.
Another fantastic weekend - the perfect morning made up for the cloudy afternoon/evening.
(Some more photos are here, not all of them are uploaded yet!)