This 2 night trip in early winter 2023 on an awesome forecast was via Ruapehu's north side. It's been almost 10 years since I last went up this side of the mountain and we stayed as usual at the comfortable NZAC hut. After heading up to the hut after dark on Friday evening we climbed Dome (2672m) and Te Ataahua (2757m) on a long Saturday. On Sunday morning we descended via the innocuous Iwikau Peak (1716m) above the lower Ski area, which has a of prominence of over 50m (71m in this case) and therefore makes my 1700m North Island Peaks of NZ list (I have only 4 of the 27 peaks left to go now).
When the weather is good the vast summit area of Ruapehu provides world class views of ice covered peaks above a warm crater lake. The lake has cooled since last time we visited in 2021 (from the other side) and this year alone the temperature has cooled from 32 C down to the 20 C it was at the time of this trip.
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