This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
They say the view west from Mt Ruapehu is beautiful. Thank goodness it was Lindsay's offer of snowcaving that lured us to Mt Ruapehu at Labour Weekend and not the photo opportunities. We set out for the mountain on Friday evening, stopping briefly for a meal in Bulls and again somewhere else to check out the results of a yuppy's over-aggressive driving. Accommodation on Friday night was a woolshed behind the Girl Guides camp near Turoa. Rising at 7.00am on Saturday we checked out the cirrus cloud high in the sky and decided to risk this usual sign of bad weather. We set out from the Turoa carpark late in the morning, 3 of us walking and Lindsay on his skis, and in deteriorating weather conditions reached the Mangaturuturu emergency shelter at 2.00pm. After lunch we donned our warm gear and headed some 200m to the east toward a nicely angled leeward slope and began digging. in theory digging snow seems so easy. It's soft and you can get so much on a shovel! Uniortunately, although the snow we chose was soft, it Soon became apparent that volumes can be deceptive. Digging a cave tor 4 people took four hours on Saturday and, after a night in the shelter, another four hours on Sunday. Again, in theory, one would think the easiest job in snowcaving would be cleaning the excavated snow from the clearing. But with howling winds, 5m visibility and driving snow/sleet/spindrift, working inside was the popular position. After completing the snowcave on Sunday we groped our way back to the shelter, had a brew, and gathered our gear ready to shift house. Lindsay decided that the high winds made carrying his skis dangerous, so he left them in the sheiter. A decision he soon regretted. Back at the snow cave we spread ourselves out ready for the night, took a sauna while cooking tea, and tummed in at around 9.00pm. Half an hour later my hopes of a warm, dry sleep were shattered by Ros who in a screaming nightmare thrashed around and brought a pile of snow down on me. Not a nice awakening at all. The next morning we sei out for the shelter to retrieve Lindsay's skis. But after an hour walking about in whiteout conditions trying to find the shelter we gave up and headed off the mountain - faaving behind Lindsay's skis, David Humm's skins and a tone shovel. All in ali the trip was a great experience, especially leaming to navigate in a whiteout. But the clear lesson is that one ignores weather signs at ones peril. Tony Alexander, Lindsay Fletcher, Rosalind Young, Mark Bredin