The Wonderful Whakapapa Valley, on the Sunny Side of Mount Ruapehu

A historic tourist chateau and rides on the Sky Waka cable car, in sunshine and snow, under pressure from global warming.

THE Whakapapa Valley lies on the north-western flank of Mount Ruapehu, a huge, occasionally active volcano in the middle of the North Island. At 2,797 m (9,177 feet), Ruapehu’s summit is the highest point of the North Island: the mountain is, however, so broad that, in a photograph, it doesn’t look very high.

Mount Ruapehu

The Whakapapa Valley is the site of the largest ski field in New Zealand, with 44 kilometres or twenty-seven and a half miles of runs, the last time I checked.

And probably the sunniest as well, being the nearest to the equator in New Zealand and on the sunny side of its mountain as well: a fact that is becoming an issue in the time of global warming.

Poster issued between 1953 and 1960, most probably by the artist Leslie George McCullough and the former New Zealand Tourist and Publicity Department, National Library of New Zealand, Eph-E-TOURISM-1950s-03, https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22732838

In the Whakapapa Valley, you can drive in an ordinary car through lowland forest that includes the Tawhai Falls (the site of Gollum’s Pool in the LOTR movies), up the mountain past the Whakapapa Village and the now-closed Chateau…