After a 90 minute hike in our ski boots with our skis over our shoulders, we arrived at near the top of the Whakappa Volcano in New Zealand

We had the option of continuing our hike, but with massive clouds moving in and visibility going from super awesome to super sketchy, we decided to take this picture and drop into a chute that would lead us back safely to the main lodge.

Skiing Whakappa in New Zealand – it was an epic view. When the crowds showed up and the lineups went from 15 minutes to 55, we decided to hike to the top. We’ll show you the picture from the top in our next post.

Beauty, eh?

That’s what we thought too – until our skis sunk about 4 inches and hit black Volcano rock. Skiing was still epic – but we had to be careful about going anywhere off piste for fear of completely wrecking our skis.  This was taken on the North island of New Zealand

Turoa and Whakappa (to pronounce it correctly, replace the “wh” with “ph”), on opposing sides of Mt. Ruapehu, are the two most popular ski resorts in New Zealand. Turoa ski resort, on the North Island’s Mt Ruapehu currently has 4.65metres of snow surpassing the largest ever snow base at any ski area in New Zealand of 4.55 metres which they had announced on 19th August.

After a week of driving from Auckland last summer, this amazing Volcano rose from the grassy farmlands into the sky. It was an amazing site to see.

The skiing was ok too… but the base was still pretty thin so we managed to trash our edges pretty effectively.

Welcome to a new weekly feature on our blog – photo posts! 

Over the last few years we’ve been fortunate to have travelled to Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Switzerland, Holland, Whistler and other amazing destinations.  Most of our picturs will be ski / mountain related… but don’t be surprised if we sneak in a few other types from our adventures. 

Our first featured picture was taken from a regular shoot & click Canon 5 meg camera with all default and auto settings. This was taken shortly after dawn in Rotorua in New Zealand last summer. 

We walked through a Geyser park, met some natives (including a friendly cat), then jumped back into our rental and headed to the glow worm caves.