The Tararua’s forgotten traverse
From Lambton Quay to the rugged heart of the Tararua wilderness, two trampers dare to link Ōtaki River’s most remote huts on a four-day adventure.
Ōtaki River is the beating heart of the western Tararua Range. It flows from under the main range, fringed by dense forest and rugged peaks. Its headwaters are bounded on one side by Oriwa Ridge, a once popular traverse that faded into obscurity following the ‘big storm’ of 1936, a tropical cyclone that devastated the ridge, destroyed Waiopehu Hut and killed tramper Ralph Wood, who died of exposure on nearby Twin Peak. Today the watershed is ringed by remote huts and paths less followed – a veritable playground for long-weekend adventures, and a wilderness calling me from the rat race of Lambton Quay and Willis Street. So it was that in the weeks leading up to King’s Birthday weekend I formed a plan with James, a stranger I had just met through the tramping club, to link the remote huts surrounding the Ōtaki. We would begin from Poads Road and take in Waiopehu Hut, then continue counter-clockwise down Oriwa Ridge, through Island Forks, Waitewaewae, Ōtaki, Dracophyllum and Te Matawai huts before re-emerging four days later at Poads Road.