An Exhausting Snow-Caving Experience
Snowcraft Course
Friday 22 August 2008 to Sunday 24 August 2008 (3 days)
Snowcraft Weekend Two
(L-R): Ronald, Sharon, Lee, Alex and TheresaThis is my second snow-caving experience and probably the last one in my life I would say.
The very sweet memory of my last snowcraft course in 2005 lured me to return to Mt Ruapehu.
Looking to polish my almost-rusted skills, I decided to give it a go and booked in at the last minute.
But the weather up there was so foul that I could find no Mem Hut after being dropped by shuttle at Tokoroa Lodge on Friday afternoon. On Saturday morning the sky still looked misty and grey. Inside the hut our instructors taught us their specialties.
When a patch of blue sky appeared after late morning tea, we twelve participants and three instructors grouped into three parties and headed off for snow-caving at the Amphitheatre.
After searching in vain, we finally selected a place believed to be sound and a suitable spot for snow-caving.
That was 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We had only two snow spades, so the digging work progressed fairly slowly.
We took turns digging the dog holes and clearing the climbers’ drive-way.
It was nearly 7.00pm when two holes were breaking through. The sky was getting darker and the weather outside became chilly, cold and severe. We had no choice but to finish our work enlarging the main hall of the cave.
Our main hall had two tiers with enough height for us to sit straight up on the second tier with no need to bend. With the helping hands from the other groups, we finished our cave at about 10.00pm - seven hours since we started digging at 3.00pm.
Thanks for all the hard work done by folks in our party, especially Alex our instructor. He not only helped in digging our cave but also dug a public loo for all to use. Thanks!
The snow-cave digging was really exhausting for me and I nearly got cramps in both legs.
I would rather not to try any more in my life, hopefully.
No food had been served since 2.00pm and we all forgot about dinner. Our dinner was finally served at 11.00pm.
Thanks, Alex, for doing all the cooking - the spaghetti was one of the best I had ever tasted.
Our thanks also go to Diane Dowle for preparing all the delicious tuckers for us.
I personally thank Diane for saving my blown-away thermarest, and Philip for lending me the overtrousers (my Macpac ones were blown away and gone), and giving me a lift to catch the inter-city bus at National Park Village just in time.
