Sunday 2 November 2025

Leader: Tony Quayle

Unlike his well documented first-pakeha crossings of the northern Ruahine, the missionary, explorer and botanist, William Colenso, only wrote a scant account of his one southern Ruahine crossing. There is no mention of leatherwood - the plant named olearia colensoi after he ‘discovered’ it on Te Atua Mahuru in 1845. Instead, he simply describes crossing the "heavily forested range". Some commentators believe his crossing point was a little north of Maharahara peak and although that’s all leatherwood country now, botanical evidence suggests severe storms and droughts since Colenso’s time may have destroyed the earlier forest cover, allowing leatherwood to take over.

The fifteen Parawai’s on our trip can attest there are no forest trees on the high ridge lines in this area now. Just leatherwood, endless leatherwood.

With the road ends around an hour apart, we split into two groups to tackle the crossing in opposite directions, with a key swap in the middle. Remarkably, both groups reached the cars at the end of their respective crossings at about the same time, after eight hours on the track.

My eastbound group ascended through some beautiful low level forest, interrupted by one very steep 180 metre high climb early on and a couple of other short steep sections closer to the top, beating Owen’s westbound crew to the 1,095 metre Maharahara high point by at least half an hour. To be fair to them though, their approach was somewhat more challenging, as they pointed out at the time and as we would soon find out. Unlike our steady climb from the west, the eastern track descended more gently for much of its length, first climbing over Matanginui (1,074 metres) and remaining in the leatherwood for at least half its length. Beyond Matanginui there is a seriously overgrown stretch where it was necessary to push through the tall leatherwood crowding in on the track. After brushing shoulders with leatherwood for perhaps half an hour it was a relief to abruptly emerge on a very wide, weed sprayed path where the scrub had been dramatically cut back. Progress was good from there on out to the cars.

Overall, a satisfying trip, with two named 1,000 metre-plus peaks bagged, plus one named stream.

Those on the trip were:

Elisabeth Hynes, Jacqui Marshall, John Glover, John Peterson, Julie James, Marian Cox, Maryann Bugg, Nisa Promchot, Owen Cox, Patrick Liss, Rob Dey, Sandra Rowland, Tony Quayle, Yingjun Shelton, Luke Bugg

Currently there is no photo album for this trip.