Mount Ruapehu: You can make it

IN THE CENTRE of the North Island,the sprawling Tongariro National Park is hard to miss with its three volcanic peaks of Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngāuruhoe jutting out of the bare high plains of the Central North Island, southwest of Lake Taupō.‍

Key Features in the Central Volcanic Area of the North Island. Source: Public domain image from NASA Global Wind, accessed from URL https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tongariro_NP_satellite.jpg in February 2017. Text added for this post.

Mount Ruapehu has two skifields, at Tūroa and Whakapapa, and is very popular with skiiers from Auckland. I’ve also done three snowcraft and climbing courses on Mount Ruapehu and climbed to the top.

‍‍

‍The name Ruapehu means ‘exploding hole’, a testament to the fact that the volcano is occasionally active, and perpetually steaming.

I also did a stint as a volunteer New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) warden at the Whakapapaiti Hut for a week over Christmas one year. This hut is part of the Round-the-Mountain Track, a more remote alternative to the popular Northern Circuit. The Round-the-Mountain Track takes four to six days to complete and covers a loop of the mountain of just over 66 kilometres.