Wild Weather

November 18, 2009

If I had written this email this morning, I would have said, “Hello from Sunny New Zealand….”  But now it’s in the late afternoon, it’s no longer sunny, the wind they predicted is picking up, the rain is falling horizontal, and my fire is struggling to stay lit.

The school holidays are over, and I had a three day weekend thanks to a closed day last Saturday at Turoa due to limited visibility and wind.  I spent much of Sunday chopping kindling and bringing in firewood to dry. Three weeks ago I was the worst fire starter in the world.  These days, I’m practically a professional.

We started the regular program on Tuesday.  During the week I coach the Ohakune primary school program with Annie, theoretically three mornings per week.  Wednesday was already off, due to a bad early morning call… at 7am the “viz” (that’s Kiwispeak for visibility) was around 20m and the upper mountain was on hold.  By 10am the fog had lifted, and while the upper mountain remained on hold, the lower mountain was open with beautiful weather and the thermometer at 0C.  It was a bummer to miss that day on snow with the kids, but I got to enjoy temperatures in the high teens (60′sF) down in Ohakune.

This morning I jumped out of bed at 6.45, got dressed and ran out the door to drive over and pick up Annie.  Sam (our coordinator) was already up at the mountain since 6am, and they live about 5km out of town.  Just as I was walking out the door, Sam sent a message that the mountain was on hold and he would text again at 7.30.  I was meant to be driving the ski team van up the mountain with the primary school kids, but there are only 11 seats, and 11 kids.  So I dropped Annie off at staff transport, and went to pick up some breakfast before grabbing the kids at 8am.  Of course then we got a message that the entire mountain was on hold due to wind and there would be no skiing that day.  So I turned around, put on my running clothes, and enjoyed another beautiful, though crazy windy, run along the river.

It must sound weird for the entire mountain to be closed due to wind.  We can have perfectly sunny skies but the mountain is closed all week because of gale force winds.  The wind however, is just one of the things the mountain categorizes in its “Hazard Register” as potential causes of “Injury or Death” on Mt. Ruapehu.  We also have to watch out for ice, avalanche, lahar flows, bombs (huge chunks of rock shooting out of the crater lake), poor visibility, getting lost, collisions, cliffs, blizzards, falling off lifts and driving athletes in the team van.  Coincidentally, as of today (and having nothing to do with my driving) coaches won’t have to drive athletes for a while since the lawyers are apparently tweaking the liability agreement.

As for ice causing injury or death, well, you’ve just never seen ice like this.  I took a picture of a snowplow covered in ice, but honestly, it doesn’t really do it justice.  After a night of freezing rain, everything is covered in several inches of ice.  There is a actually a job position at Mt. Ruapehu as part of the “de-icing crew”.   They get up long before the crack of dawn to climb the lift towers and knock the ice off with Louisville Sluggers (the wood is imported from the US because there is no hardwood in New Zealand hard enough to make these bats).  You can recognize the de-icers by the heavy duty harness they walk around in.

The last time the volcano erupted was in 2007.  They say it’s on a 10 year cycle, so I probably won’t see an eruption, but lahar flows are more than likely.  According to the Mt. Ruapehu website a lahar “is a volcanic mud flow that travels down gullies and valleys at approximately 60-90 km/h and contains ash, mud, water and other debris. Lahars present a significant hazard to the users of the mountain and its facilities.”  Great!

Poor visibility is the norm up there.  But in the event of a complete white out, which, in fact I’ve already seen, the veteran coaches suggested to have one of the kids who’ve been skiing there all their lives lead us down, since they know the mountain way better than we ever will.  Fun – and safe!

The ski patrol says they do more avalanche control than any other mountain in the world which seems to be true, since we hear the bombs go off practically every morning.  But during the holiday week, the only mountain hazard I was really worried about was being hit by a punter (stupid tourist).  There are more punters per m2 of slope here than in Ignalina.  The ski school is fairly big, but not very many people take lessons.  On top of that, the classes regularly have more than 10 students per instructor and only last 2 hours.  Not much can be done except to stay out of their way.

I’m assured however that the New Zealand ACC (Accident and Compensation Coverage) is excellent when it comes to urgent care.

 

Filed under: Daily Life,New Zealand,Skiing,Sports,Traveler Tips

Tags: avalanche, funny, ice, New Zealand, Ohakune, ski, Skiing, Sports, Turoa, weather, wind