Ice Climbing Tukino - July 2010

The Auckland Section has run a trip to Tukino on the Eastern side of Ruapehu for the last few years. Known as the Wildside; it lived up to its name right from the start.

Three 4WD’s headed south from Auckland around 5pm, and one car from the Wellington Section. The Auckland climbers got to the start of the Desert road but found the barriers up and the road closed due a truck crash due to snow and ice. Access denied! The only option was to drive around the entire mountain to get to the lodge. Another hour and a half of driving had us stopped in front of another closed road sign....ugh...This was not looking good.

We sent in “Chief Negotiator“Mike to negotiate our way passed. Mike managed to get passed the police, and all the roading engineers. We had to sign our lives away saying we were on our own. But we all quickly signed and the gate was opened and we had the entire road to ourselves.... but it was pretty nasty, we could see why the road had been shut.

It was early Saturday morning by this stage.  Pitch black, howling wind, and snow and ice on the road.  With the truck in 4WD we crawled up the white road towards to the gravel track that we had to drive up to get to Tukino .

When we turned off the slick icy tarmac on to the gravel the truck felt much more grounded. We hooned up the gravel in 4WD, crashing through the snow, I had great fun :) We managed to make it to lodge at 1am. But it had taken about 8 hours from the Auckland! Committed!

Saturday morning and the wind had gone and the sun of out!  We all had a sleep-in due to the late night, but were super keen to get out on the snow and ice.  We spend the entire day climbing a huge frozen waterfall called Margaret's Leap.  It was awesome. There was enough ice for all to have a play on, and only 30mins walk from the lodge.

At dusk a group headed off to the Whangaehu Hut for the night. While the rest of us enjoyed all the comfits of home in the ex-OPC lodge.

On Sunday, myself and Mike Rutledge headed up to one of the peaks on Ruapehu. We left just before dawn, and climbed up to the East ridge of  Te Heu Heu (2732m). We then headed down another ridge to meet up with the others who were still attacking the ice wall. We then walked back to the lodge. Cleaned up and rolled down the hill as the sunset. Perfect weekend!

- Anthony Stead