Arriving at Mangaehuehu Hut felt like the old days of tramping. A sturdy old hut where just a few locals – some up from Ohakune, a family from Raetihi and two Wellington friends – mingled on a misty evening. Later, when swirling clouds parted and we rushed out to snap the sunset hues on Peretini (Girdlestone) Peak, some pointed to climbing routes they’d tackled previously. These were locals who knew their mountain.
To think just over that peak sat a much bigger, flasher hut with solar lighting, double-glazed windows and gas cookers, full and buzzing with Tongariro Northern Circuit Great Walkers and a hut ranger to manage them. (It will no doubt remain incredibly popular even with no official Great Walk this season.) And that further north the last of hundreds of hikers, a thousand perhaps, of all nationalities, were heading home or to nearby accommodation after a day of tramping over the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Still more were likely camping out, on Te Araroa.
But here, on the south-eastern side of Mt Ruapehu, was another, quieter world.
It’s not as if Mangaehuehu Hut is remote, hard to get to or set in a boring landscape no-one would want to visit. From Ohakune Mountain Road, the walk in along the Round the Mountain Track – a gently undulating traverse through a medley of beech forest, subalpine shrubs and tussock, streams, waterfalls and wetlands – takes three hours. Ruapehu’s peaks, Tahurangi and Peretini, loom above. The track is clearly marked.
It had been decades since my last visit. In the 1970s I’d brought a group of Auckland teenagers here on a volunteer work trip to help the local ranger clean and paint the hut. It has been repainted several times since and remains well maintained, has a cranking hot wood stove, and nestles on a wee terrace surrounded by encroaching shrublands. It was good to be back.
My friend Darryn and I were on a three-day visit to the Round the Mountain Track. Sadly, we didn’t have time for the full circuit. Instead, we’d left one car 7km up Tukino Road, at the 2WD limit, then driven to the trail head on Ohakune Mountain Road, through its tunnel of ancient podocarps which, sheltered by the mountain, survived Taupō’s cataclysmic 186AD eruption. From Waitonga Falls car park we wended our gentle way past the high, trickling falls, the Blyth Hut turn-off and beyond, to Mangaehuehu, to meet the locals.
On day two, shrouded in mist, we continued east bound for Rangipo Hut. The track soon led us out of shrubby shelter and onto stark, exposed landscapes, blasted and crafted by altitude, wind and volcanic drama. We crossed broad stone fields, laid bare by Taupō’s violence and further scoured by subsequent Ruapehu eruptions. Yet there was beauty among the chaos as lichens softened the stones and little, sticky insectivorous sundews burst bright and shiny from the rubble.
We descended to the Wahianoa River swingbridge then toiled back up and out of this deep, wide rocky valley.
We met no other walkers on this desolate summer day, and the Kaimanawa Range was hidden in black clouds as we continued east around the mountain.
I’d last been to Rangipo Hut with my teenage volunteers, this time to eradicate wilding pines. Having permission to lop and whack down little trees in a national park definitely appealed to those kids. In two days we dispatched hundreds of seedlings but left thousands more, spreading across the subalpine slopes in their march to smother the native vegetation. So it was a happy surprise now to see not one single invasive pine blighting the mountain landscape. Huge kudos to all those pine-pulling volunteers, many from Wanganui and Hutt Valley tramping clubs, who toiled, literally for decades, to help DOC rout these weeds.
Rangipo Hut emerged out of the bleakness. A Taupō father and son arrived later and said it was sunny down below. At 1600m, higher than anywhere in the Tararua Range, Rangipo is exposed to a localised colder, stormier climate. But the weather didn’t matter to us. Like Mangaehuehu, Rangipo is a solid, cosy hut for its near 60 years of age.
In the morning, drifting clouds teased us with glimpses of snowy peaks above and Kaimanawa forests to the east as Darryn and I continued across the rock and rubble toward the Whangaehu. With the teenagers I had skipped across this river on a little bridge, blissfully ignorant of the volatility of the place.
Rivers generally have gentle origins – a forest spring or alpine tarn, perhaps. In contrast, the Whangaehu drains the vent of New Zealand’s largest, most active volcano, Ruapehu. The name, Ruapehu, means ‘exploding pit’. At normal flows the Whangaehu carries hot, acidic water. If there is an eruption, or the crater wall collapses, then a lahar – a slurry of pyroclastic ash, mud, lava, rocks, snow and ice – can surge down the valley at frighteningly high speed. Well known is the tragic lahar of Christmas Eve, 1953, which demolished the Tangiwai rail bridge minutes before the overnight express arrived and caused the loss of 151 lives. In the 1995–96 eruption series, 36 lahars were recorded in the Whangaehu, the largest carrying six million cubic metres of rock and moving at around 90km/h. Our little bridge of the 1970s, and two more since, have been demolished by such flows. The billy goats’ troll wouldn’t stand a chance here.
Beside the track was a small sign with a serious message: ’Do not pass here if you hear a loud, roaring noise upriver.’ We listened. We looked upriver. All was quiet, the mountain still, and we crossed safely on the latest, highest, longest bridge built here so far, anchored to solid bluffs on each side of the river that coursed its milky-churning way through the chasm below.
From here it was a doddle back to the car, walking now in bright sunshine and with stunning views – of course just as we were leaving.
Often, when people ask where I’ve been tramping and I say ‘Tongariro’, the response is something like, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to do that”, or “I’ve done that, isn’t it amazing.”
Inevitably, they are thinking of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Yes, that is one beautiful and special walk. But there is so much more to Tongariro National Park, and much of it more safely accessible when the weather is bad than exposed places such as the Crossing. Be it a multi-day tramp or a day walk, it’s worth exploring further afield.
Going full circle
The Round the Mountain Track is a 66km ‘tramping track’ standard circuit. Huts include Waihohonu (bookings required October 24 to April 30), Rangipo, Mangaehuehu, Blyth, Mangaturuturu and Whakapapaiti. With several road access points (Whakapapa, Ohakune Mountain Road, Tukino Road and Desert Road), the walk can also be completed in sections or as day walks. Landscapes include beech forests, subalpine shrublands, cascades, wetlands and mountain desert. During winter when snow and ice will cover parts of the track, alpine equipment and route-finding skills are essential.
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