Ruapehu winter guide: Walks, cycling and family activities. Photo / Tim Roxborogh
What to do in Ruapehu in winter? As it turns out, a lot more than just skiing, writes Tim Roxborogh
On the forested slopes of Mt Ruapehu, where I’ve spent the past 30 minutes walking through moss-draped beech and kaikawaka trees in golden hour sun, the tree line suddenly stops. This happens on a multi-angled volcano like this, where nature’s whims create abrupt shifts in climate and landscape. Winds change, rain and snowfall alter course and sporadically, ash spouts and lahars flow. And what presents as the most enchanted alpine forest ends like a line has been drawn on a map.
Think of it like Alice in Wonderland and the discovery of new and magical surroundings the further Alice explores, and so it is true for Mt Ruapehu and the 796sq km Tongariro National Park.
The soft soil of the track is now a sweeping boardwalk across a tussock wetland. And right there, revealing herself now the forest has paused, is the North Island’s tallest peak, the 2797m Mt Ruapehu, fully visible with the cobalt blue of the sky popping against the white of the fresh mid-winter snow. And all of it echoed by a reflecting pond.
This is the Waitonga Falls Track, a 4km return trail starting 11km from Ohakune towards Turoa Ski Area. The 39m falls are meant to be the main attraction, but this scene of wetland, forest, snow, sky and reflecting waters has me forgetting anything that’s still to come. There’s even a halo above the trees from the lowering sun and the realisation my 1200m altitude is only just above a blanket of clouds, ready to recapture the mountain.
I’ve got one bar of reception so I video call my wife, Aimee, and the kids (Riley, 7, and Austin, almost 3), who are back down the mountain where we’re staying at Ohakune’s Rocky Mountain Chalets. They’re playing Monopoly while I’m having my Damascus moment, having spent the better part of the day sledding and taking ski lessons at Turoa. Knee surgery limits me to bush walking and cycling, but witnessing our children in snow for the first time this past week at both Whakapapa and Turoa has been exhilarating.
At Whakapapa we experienced the new Snowland area, with its multiple sledding and tubing lanes, magic carpet and expanded snow school. Then there’s the Sky Waka Gondola that transports skiers, snowboarders and sightseers alike 1.8km to an altitude above 2000m for New Zealand’s highest restaurant at Knoll Ridge Chalet (you won’t regret the buffet’s bao buns nor the Thai green curry). Above the clouds, everything from the views to the structure itself is surreal in the best possible way.
Whakapapa (New Zealand’s largest ski-field at 550ha) and Turoa (the highest descent in Australasia at 722m) complement each other. It may well be that Whakapapa is the goer for families and non-skiers, and that Turoa gets the nod for more capable skiers and snowboarders. But this non-skier loved both, including Turoa’s ski-lift up above 1900m to see everything from frozen waterfalls, heart-stopping gradients that people actually ski down and, off in the distance, piercing the clouds, Mt Taranaki.
We’d first spotted Mt Taranaki – as well as Mt Ruapehu, Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe – at the beginning of our holiday while staying at Oranleigh Lodge. Perched in the hills just out of Taumarunui, Oranleigh is a newly built two-storey, four-bedroom luxury home. And if you’re there on a clear, still winter’s day, you’ll know never to underestimate how captivating the countryside around Taumarunui is.
The low winter sun creates drama in the shadows of all the peaks and valleys Oranleigh overlooks, and it’s not just the North Island’s famous quartet of highest mountains, but also farmland, forest and the meanderings of the country’s third-longest river, the 290km Whanganui. The kids may’ve been more focused on the giant buckets of Lego and which of the multitude of beds to sleep in, but my wife and I knew the instant we saw Oranleigh’s living area and floor-to-ceiling windows that we’d be eating in for our first night, taking in as much as possible of those views, and driving a few golf balls from the lodge’s own tee.
Oranleigh is an ideal base for everything from Bradley’s Garden (a 5-star Garden Of National Significance), the acclaimed Forgotten World Adventures rail carts, and even the country’s biggest alpaca farm, Nevalea. Or if you’re here primarily for the snow, Whakapapa is only an hour away. But it was somewhere barely 20 minutes south of the tiny town of Owhango that has us already plotting our return.
Adjoining the 257sq km Tongariro Forest (which itself lies next to Tongariro National Park) is the 148ha slice of prehistoric rainforest, Ohinetonga Scenic Reserve. It’s easy to assume that if not within the boundaries of a national park, then perhaps it’s not quite as worth visiting. I’ll be blunt: Ohinetonga blew me away to the extent it would rank among the most stunning bush walks I’ve done in New Zealand.
Usually, when native forest is this spectacular – with towering centuries-old rimu, totara and miro trees – it’s more remote. But at Ohinetonga you’re just off the highway, it’s an easily accessible 90-minute loop, and you’re close to a terrific cafe (Blue Hill, I recommend the nachos and the lasagne). We’ll definitely be back.
That’s also our plan for the Singapore-sized Pureora Forest (760sq km), roughly an hour’s drive to Taumarunui’s northeast.
It was 2013 when the 85km Timber Trail through Pureora opened, and 2017 when the lodge at the Piropiro halfway point welcomed its first guests. Since then the Timber Trail has become so entrenched as a North Island cycling must-do (20,000 riders per year) that it’s hard to believe the whole concept is barely a dozen years old.
The Timber Trail is also suitable on foot, or you can do a bit of both. After walking through some of the country’s largest, gnarliest rata trees on the 60-minute Rata Loop behind the lodge, I biked 6km to the most-photographed landmark on the trail, the 141m Maramataha Bridge. A swing bridge, it’s not just the trail’s longest, but at 58m, Maramataha is the highest too. Beneath is a lush ravine, offering clues to Pureora’s vital saving from the logging that continued until protests in the late 1970s swayed both public and government opinion.
There’s an unpretentious spirit at the Timber Trail Lodge, where fireside chats, board games and delicious communal meals with fellow travellers have you swapping tales and thinking about where to head next. And for the people who adore Pureora, chances are that will also involve the new Mountains To Sea network of trails back further towards Ruapehu.
With our next base at The Park Hotel, Waimarino (30 minutes south of Taumarunui, dine by the hotel’s roaring fire and go for the chicken korma with naan), we rode Mountains To Sea’s nearby 9km Te Hangaruru section. Austin grinned away while sitting shotgun with me, while Riley stretched herself on her own bike. And as a sampler of the wonders of cycling between the two great North Island national parks of Tongariro and Whanganui alongside the tributaries that lead from the Central Plateau all the way to the oceanside city of Whanganui, Mountains To Sea is a much-admired community initiative.
Community is a word that keeps coming up the longer we’re here. It manifests in the support given to the excellent, evolving National Army Museum in Waiouru (20 minutes east of Ohakune; kids will especially enjoy the activity trail and the hands-on Kids HQ), as well as wonderfully bonkers places like Horopito Motors where we finished our Mountains To Sea ride.
Part museum, part colossal junkyard, Horopito feels like the national archives of every historical automobile component you could ever conceive. Reportedly the largest vintage car wreckers in the Southern Hemisphere, Horopito is for movie buffs too, having starred in Kiwi classics like Smash Palace, Goodbye Pork Pie and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Film fans should also beeline to Raetihi’s Dinosaur House, and it too falls under the description of “wonderfully bonkers”. Ten minutes west of Ohakune, husband-and-wife Ian and Sarah Moore have converted a 1922 heritage council building into an internationally significant collection of all things dinosaur. As in, a giant wall-bursting T-Rex, an exact replica animatronic brachiosaurus from the first Jurassic Park film (yes, it munches), and even the late Sam Neil’s Jurassic Park 3 costume.
Riley and Austin raved about the Dinosaur House, just as they spent each day in Ohakune asking when we were going back to Carrotland. Everybody knows about Ohakune’s 7.5m tall carrot, widely hailed as the world’s largest carrot statue. But if that claim to fame doesn’t move you, check out the still expanding Carrotland right behind the statue.
This most glorious of playgrounds takes Ohakune’s vegetable-growing reputation and runs with it to such an extent that Carrotland – complete with carrot-themed race car and rocket ship, not to mention non-carroty things like pirate ships, zip-lines and obstacle courses – has got to be up there with New Zealand’s best.
It’s been some week. The kids are happy, Aimee is happy, and I’m halfway up a mountain in a clearing of such beauty it’s making me stop and contemplate in ways I haven’t for a long time. I make it to the waterfall, but by the time I return to the boardwalk, Ruapehu’s summit’s been lost to the clouds. The metaphor hits me; a carpe diem moment if ever I’ve felt it.
The writer was a guest of Visit Ruapehu.