Susan's visit - Skiing at Mount Ruapehu

It was time for us to do a bit of skiing, another activity Susan had requested for her visit. We got up early (in the opinions of Seán and I at least) and were up at the mountain by 9am. Unfortunately so was half of New Zealand as it was still school holiday time. We were planning on only doing a half days skiing but as we only got onto the mountain with our skis at 11 we quickly decided to go for the full day.

As Seán had never skied before, he went down to the aptly named “Happy Valley” and got a lesson while Susan and I headed up and tried to remember how to ski. It had been quite a while for both of us! We had a great day exploring the mountain and even got some great pics. We ended up above the clouds and had a fantastic view of Mount Ngauruhoe and even Mount Taranaki far off to the west.

By mid afternoon Susan’s patched up ankle started giving out so we decided to pack it in for the day. We tried contacting Seán to tell him we’d stopped but his mobile battery died as soon as I texted. We were quite surprised when he skied for the full day, given his lack of enthusiasm when we’d left him that morning. However, it turned out that he had been having a great day practising everything he learned in his lesson.

Once we finally managed to locate Seán we headed up to Taupo again to catch up with the household there.