Faced with breathing difficulties, 85 kilometre per hour wind gusts and a reroute due to heavy rains, five students successfully navigate five days of challenges to complete their Duke of Edinburgh Gold Qualifying Journey.
Video footage of this trip exists, and I will pay good coin to ensure it never sees the light of day.
It’s thirty-mumble years (surely not 40+!?) since I was one of the clubbies at Whakapapa and I’ve often thought about doing it again.
Take two ice axes, a rope, some rack and a ski touring setup, and you have the ingredients for a frivolous day out on the magical maunga.
My ski club mates call it Sweary Pants Gully. There's a good reason for that.
A big day out on the east side of Ruapehu, with plenty of moments of 'will it go?' and 'holy smokes, it does'.
Just as I thought what lay above wasn’t the prettiest icescape I’d seen, Simon paraphrased for me. “This ice is sh#t.” He was busily hacking away at brittle rime ice on steep volcanic rock. Ice fragments flew everywhere.
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