The southern Kaingaroa Forest, south of the Napier Taupo Highway is an area of extremes with annual snowfall, bitter frosts, blizzards, heavy fog, dangerously cold wind chill and heavy rain as clouds step up off the lake, rutting out the pumice-based roads. Then the summers can be almost desert-like and turn the place into a dust bowl. Sometimes the deep bulldust from ground-up pumice requires four-wheel drive to get moving on the main arterial routes and passing doubles require light vehicles to stop in the ensuing white-out. S...

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