Mt Ruapehu Part 1

These holidays I’m going to a mountain. But not just any mountain, I'm going to a mountain with SNOW on it, and that means I’ll be snowboarding on the mountain. Well if you haven't already been to the mountain of snow before then let me entertain you while I tell you about my fun time with my family. There are 6 in our family, Mum and Dad, four sons and no daughters. Just to let you know we were not on the mountain the whole time. The thing about my mum and dad is if there is not a spa at the bach we’re staying at, we will not rent that bach.

It always starts off with us at home packing our bags, both the night before and the day that we leave. It takes us a little while to get down to Ruapehu. The town we stayed in was Ohakune, which is only about 30 minutes from the actual mountain. If you were wondering how long it takes to get from our home in Auckland to Ohakune, the answer is approximately 5 hours.

The house was pretty cool. After setting up camp at the bach we didn’t really do anything except say our prayers and go to sleep. The next morning we got our season passes for the snowboarding and played in the snow for about an hour, then drove home went for a spa and watched a movie. Our family loves watching movies. We have over 300 of them? Sadly we only brought about 100 of them.

3rd day, time to hit the snow today. It was exciting, finally getting on the snow, I can’t wait to show my moves and snowboard. There are no skiers in this house! There are two sides to the mountain - one side’s called Turoa, the other side Whakapapa is where we are snowboarding on for today. It’s a blizzard on Whakapapa side. Toby the youngest of us all is snowboarding and the age of 7! So adults that means that anyone can try it.

The way that we all started learning how to snowboard is we would do something called Heels and Toes. It’s just turning and braking, the way you do that is you lean over your front knee, bend your knees, turn your hips and look where you want to go. Heels is when you’re on a snowboard looking down the mountain and you do all the stuff I told you and turn. When you do this you’ll then be facing down the mountain and on your heels, but you have to remember not to bend too far forward or to far back because you could fall. Toes is the exact opposite to heels. You start on heels and turn, when you’re on your toes you face up the mountain.

When we don’t go to the snow we either hang at home watching movies, play board games, go for a spa or we’re out of the house going shopping and looking around town. But what’s fun is the basketball court in town. I went there with my mum, and four brothers. “Beep” the finger whistle blew and the game had started. The teams were me, Toby and Mum, vs Noah and Levi. People were shooting goals, dribbling the ball, doing double dribbling, traveling and doing a lot of fouls. The crowd went wild (the players)! It was a fun game, the score was something : something, but what we do know is Levi and Noah won by a little (a bit).

One day some decided they didn’t feel like going to the Mountain. So we both went our separate ways. I was with the wise group, the group that stayed and went into town with mum and Toby. We were looking for something to do. We finally found the solution to our happiness.

The place was pretty cool, the place that we went to was…

I’ll have Part 2 in just a little while, but while you wait I might be able to come up with another blog for you about what I did and the fun I had doing it.