Friday 21 May 2010

Sunny days and Snow

23-25 November 2007

Upper Tama Lake from WTMC Lodge

Trip Leader: Darren, Party: Myself, Marie S, Donna and several others

Yeah, so I found this trip report hidden in the drafts folder of my personal blog. Rather than just delete it, I thought I should move it here and possibly add some photos... Now to hunt out the photos and let the post speak for itself!

Went up to the tramping club lodge at Whakapapa for the weekend to do some tramping and we had a great time - mainly because we spent more time sitting around drinking than tramping, but thats not really the point...

After a long (6 hour) trip on a very uncomfortable bus, punctuated by a stop in Bulls for very average Chinese (wanted Kebab, but the queue was horrendous and we only had half an hour), (and a very cool sunset)
Sunset, Bulls
We arrived on the mountain to find warm conditions and the moon shining very brightly through the clouds, making all three mountains visible on our way up the start of the Bruce Rd. I really wished I had an SLR camera and tripod to get some images of how stunning it was, and I think this trip was the one that started me really thinking about getting one!

Saturday dawned clear with an early start (breakfast from 7, out the door to the bus by just after 8). We had stunning views to Taranaki all morning!
Taranaki Dawn
My group got dropped off behind the chateau and headed for the Tama Lakes, completely pummeling all DoC listed times in our casual stroll to the top lake.
Sign Sign of the times
The track in places felt like a highway with the number of people on it - a bit of a surprise given how good the weather was for a Tongariro Crossing! We wandered past Lower Tama Lake, where a school group or similar appeared to have set up camp on the shores
Lower Tama, and headed up to the shelter at Upper Tama. (There was a LOT of wind, and considering how hot it was everywhere else that day, we were totally grateful for it!
After a casual and leisurely lunch we wandered back down, past Taranaki Falls Taranaki Falls Lower Taranaki Falls and on to the Chateau for a couple of beers each while waiting for the bus to go and pick up the others before collecting us on the way back through.
We got a lot of beer time in the wait... over 2 hours... If it hadn't clouded over and started getting cold and windy it would have been great! Eventually the bus came and we all crammed in for the trip back up to the top of the bruce, where we promptly queued for the shower, drank Raro for those of us who had no alcohol and waited for dinner.
During the wait for dinner we were treated to a fantastic sunset light show. Marvellous!!
Iwikau Village Photographer at Sunset
Sunday dawned far too early... The light was shining full-force on our window at 6.45am, and the curtains were not very thick!!
Up for breakfast and more stunning views over Taranaki, a group of us decided to take a lazy wander up to the snow line. It started to get quite hot as we got further up, but we found snow in more than just patches at the bottom of the waterfall express. I had developed lumps on my archilles on Saturday and so was only in light sneakers so stayed in the chairlift area while the others went for a wander up to the waterfall.
First snow Me Glacier hut Down Watch out for that cliff, he's trouble v2
After that, it was back down to the top of the bruce to the pub for some icecream, then back up to the lodge to clean up and chat...
Finally it was time to leave, and we stopped in levin for dinner on the way home.