Ruapehu

Today's the day ........................ for volcanoes, vents and volcanism

We had a lovely picnic on the shores of Lake Taupo today - but all the many activities that you can do on and in the lake itself have just passed us by because we have been discovering a whole different side to this particular part of the country.

The Taupo Volcanic Zone is the jewel in the crown of New Zealand's volcanism. Lake Taupo itself sits in a enormous caldera that stretches nearly 300 kms from Mount Ruapehu in the south to White Island in the northeast - and has been active from about 1.8M years to the present day. This is Mount Ruapehu. At 2291m it has snow on the top, even in summer - and it is a popular area in the winter for skiing. The last big eruption from Mount Ruapehu was in 1995/6 when a vast cloud of steam and gases was visible for many months.

The main problem that it caused to the resilient people around here was that it messed up their winter sports for a couple of seasons! But it must have been an awesome sight .....................