Pros & Cons of Tobogganing Taranaki (not to be confused with teriaki)

Taranaki, or Mount Egmont, is a 2518 metre tall composite cone volcano located on the west coast of the North Island, near New Plymouth. The fourth such volcano to rise up over this "hot spot" in the last 2 million or so years, its snow filled crater drops at a sharp 45 degree angle to around 1500 metres, gradually evening out normal-curve style until it meets the surrounding plain below.

The mountain sits in the middle of a rather funny looking National Park. The ground surrounding Taranaki was originally dense jungle (super-awesome jungle! So many shades of green, countless kinds of trees and shrubs and ferns and vines twining around the trees and smaller trees twining around the bigger trees and moss and lichen cascading off every surface!), but since the soil and climate are excellent for growing things, European settlers kind of went on a free-for-all with saws and matches to clear vast swatches of land for farming purposes. So a few slightly more farsighted individuals arranged for a park to protect the rise on which the mountain stands. The result: Egmont National Park, a nearly perfect circle of jungle ringing a volcano in the middle of a bunch of cow fields. (see google map... not your average park-shape :p )
https://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=mount+taranaki&hl=en&ll=-39.29658,174.059143&spn=0.233277,0.396881&sll=-39.294454,174.199905&sspn=0.233284,0.396881&t=h&gl=nz&hnear=Mt+Taranaki&z=11

Anyhow... Whilst wandering around up there yesterday, it came to me that volcanoes are the perfect shape for tobogganing - start off steep, get up some speed, and a nice long run-out to slow down and come to a perfect stop on the nice flat ground. Of course, there are all sorts of problems with this idea.

Pros:

• Its a volcano. How cool is that?
• Aforementioned ideal shape
• Taranaki bends the winds around it to produce a bizarre "cold spot" on the North Island, and gets large quantities of snow on the top of the cone.
• top 1/2 to 2/3 is free of anything to run in to

Cons:

• Its a volcano. A not entirely dormant volcano. Most toboggans are not built for both snow and lava, let alone pyroclastic flows or falling ash and pumice...
• The bottom 1100 metres is a dense tangle of jungle foliage
• It hardly ever snows near the bottom. Just rains. A lot. As much as Milford. But rarely any snow.
• There also isn't any snow outside of the crater, right now. Yay, scree-lichen-tussok-jungle tobogganing?
• There are giant vertical cliffs and fissures all over the side of the mountain. Bring a parachute with your toboggan.
• Also bring a snow maker, and a fast-acting clear-cut machine.
• The bottom, which was my hypothetical "slow down" zone, is cross-fenced every few hundred metres. Watch out for barbed wire. Also cows. 
• You have to carry your toboggan two and a half thousand metres into the sky. Also your parachute, chainsaw (terrible idea... maybe something that produces giant sound waves which pulverize whatever is in your path, but they you'd go deaf...), snow maker, and cow bell. I'm lazy.

Okay, so I'm thinking that this is not such a great idea, and I believe I will refrain from any such attempts.

Laundry's dry, time to go!

-Marysa