10-11 May 2025
Leader: Tony Quayle
Although some way off being the highest peak in the Ruahine, Te Atuaoparapara is certainly one of the most impressive, particularly when its craggy, shingly summit is viewed from the south - a prospect that was hidden from the fourteen of us who approached it from the north on day two of our weekend wander.
We’d warmed up with a climb to the overbooked Sunrise Hut on Saturday, while several members who were unable to secure bookings carried on to Top Maropea for the night. For those of us staying at Sunrise, June’s SkyJo card game was our after-dinner entertainment, boisterous for the first round, then quietly after the young children (and older Parawais) in the hut had gone to bed.
We regrouped at the Top Maropea turnoff at 9am on Sunday, ready for the main event. The saddle under the northern slopes of Te Atuaoparapara is seventy metres or so lower than Armstrong Saddle, where the Sunrise track joins the main range, with the lower altitude implying more leatherwood.
Yep, not only more leatherwood, minimalist tracking too: not a big issue, but it did slightly slow our pace. Fittingly for an impressive peak, the slope steepened towards the summit ridge, a place where it was easy to feel we’d climbed a real mountain. The views were spectacular, but the delights of the scree descent towards Waipawa Saddle remained hidden.
A few gasps could be heard when we did reach the scree, but despite a couple of the newer members of our team needing a bit of coaching and assistance on the trickiest bits - and a minor navigation error by one of our most experienced - we all made it safely down to our lunch stop at Waipawa Saddle.
It used to be that exiting the range via the Waipawa River was quick and easy, but the supposedly-tracked upper section through speargrass, tussock, leatherwood and more speargrass is a bit messy nowadays. Some members made short work of this, proving perhaps that my perception that the route had deteriorated was as much a factor of my age as it was of track quality.
After the speargrass and other nasties, reaching the open riverbed is a relief, but negotiating the steep and rocky first few hundred metres still requires care. Unfortunately, one member of our team did take a tumble, resulting in a badly sprained ankle. However, with assistance on some of the less-stable ground and stream crossing she was able to walk out.
Reaching the roadend it was great to find vehicles waiting for us, thanks to the group that had gone ahead to collect them from the Sunrise carpark.
A satisfying trip that even our injured person enjoyed.
Those on the trip were:
Elisabeth Hynes, Kate Livingston, Lindsey Griffiths, Marian Cox, Maryann Bugg, Matt Freeland, Owen Cox, Patrick Liss, Paula Richardson, Peter Davis, Rob Dey, Tony Quayle, Yingjun Shelton, Ben Quayle, Jolan Berra
