Comment Share Posted on Thursday October 8th at 11:26 a.m.

As snow buffs, storm chasing is not unheard of, but in the middle of October...?

With half the ski areas already closed, there's not alot of opportunity when nature calls on this scale.   Unless you've been hiding on Mars, you would have heard the stories this week about the 1000 or so stranded people on the Napier-Taupo road and the 20 - 25 cms of fresh powder at both Turoa and Whakapapa; not to mention the single digit temperatures across the country... 

So lets paint a picture...  Southerly storm hits with 2 days of mega snow fall; a brief gap is forecast with fine weather followed by a Northerly storm front fast approaching.  We plan to hit that small gap!

Sitting in Wellington (sorry South Islanders, this story may not apply to you), I follow the news, hear the stories, watch the Snowco cams and wonder "Can I do a day trip to /from Wellington to Turoa in time for this supposed gap, before the next front hits.  

3 and a half hours of driving each way is a bit off putting, but getting in some last turns before the end of season could also be worth the 7 hours of driving.  So we do it!  At this juncture is important to point out that having both a supportive spouse and a supportive boss are crucial ingredients to success.  Leaving at 6:30am the Southerly was still pounding the capital and it was touch and go to see if the forecast was going to be correct.   Faith aside, we were using the snowco.mobi access all the way there to get updates direct from the field.   It cleared at Bulls and we knew we had planned it just right.  Arriving at the access road at 10 am we were amped and pumped for the day ahead.

Nicknames - we've all got them and so do the ski areas.  Most coined by dis-heartened punters who are bitter at a bad experience.  Lets see, some names I've come across over the years are "Concrete Peak", "The Regrettables", "Mt.Shut", and yesterday I heard another - "Queueroa".

It turns out we weren't the only ones with this idea as the queue for the carpark took around half an hour from the access road.  In all fairness though, it is school holidays and we amused ourselves with a snow fight with the car in front of us,  no real harm done and we were on the chair by 10:45.   Unfortunately the High Noon was un-operational until after midday and this left a real bottleneck at the lower half of the mountain - The Giant Chair seemed to struggle maintaining flow and stopped several times while we waited.  This is where I first heard the nickname.

Our first real run wasn't till midday and fortunately this is also when they opened up the High Noon Express Chair and boy does that make a difference.  It seperated the beginners from the more experienced. lessened the queues and opened up a huge amount of room to explore. 

Vertigo, Snowbird, Muzza Zone, Tardis Chutes all had fantastic pockets of untouched powder and we spent hours carving fresh tracks and playing like kids on a giant playground.   Smiles all round and everyone seemed stoked to be there.   Sure there were a few queues and there was a small wait to get up, but it didn't seem to matter, cause everyone's spirits seemed lifted by the fresh snow and the blue bird skies...

We left just after 3:30pm - a bit earlier than I would have liked.  But we knew that a 3 and a half hour drive was ahead of us.

The final verdict: If you have a seasons pass, then beg, borrow and steal to chase the powder when it comes. Even half a dozen runs in 25 cms of fresh powder is worth the 3 hour commute each way.   If you are just a casual skier or have to buy a day pass, then the final decision can be 50-50...   Depending on how passionate you are about the white stuff.

All this to say that there is supposed to be the mother of all snow storms heading back to Ruapehu this weekend. 

The call is yours!