Top Maropea and the midwinter sun

On the track a few metres ahead, a small bird fossicked among the leaf litter. A female blackbird, I thought, but it was too small and its posture wrong. I stopped and looked more carefully and, stunned by the unexpected encounter, recognised it as a North Island robin (toutouwai). These gentle, confiding birds have suffered badly from the depredations of introduced mammalian predators like stoats, rats, and possums and I had no idea they still survived anywhere in the Ruahine. 

By the time I'd retrieved the camera and fitted the big lens, the little bird had disappeared. I prowled unsuccessfully but as I was about to give up I saw a flicker of movement in the canopy. I looked up to see a toutouwai peering back. I managed a few not-great photos — just good enough for the record. It eventually disappeared and I was again about to stow the camera when the bird appeared on the ground where I’d first seen it. It hopped onto a mossy log and posed beautifully. Perhaps because of the season and the recent snow, I'd seen few birds on the trip and the encounter felt as if the Ruahine had, at the last minute, relented and offered a gift to make the journey more memorable.[1]

 

The previous day I’d walked up to Sunrise hut, where I’d stopped for a late lunch and a conversation with Geoff and Brett. After leaving them in the early afternoon sun, I walked through crisp snow and across stony ground, and over frost-heave, and then along short, deeply incised sections of track where pooled water had turned to ice of lapidary hardness, and soon I arrived at Armstrong Saddle. Light, misty cloud swirled up from the eastern gullies and slid over the tops but it was the sort of cloud that does nothing other than add interest to photographs and a sense of possibility to the walk. 

Animal footprints came down the track towards me. Some were deer but another set puzzled me. I guessed possum but could see no trace of claws and the only animal that might have left such tracks was a cat — a very large cat. I hoped I was wrong; a feral cat would be terrible for the wildlife in the area. I added my own tracks through the snow and stopped occasionally to photograph, knowing I had plenty of time, aware that it’s too easy to keep walking because you’re in a rhythm and making good time and enjoying the feeling of being at home between the land and the sky, and soon the track entered low beech forest, boughs heavy with snow. The forest grew taller as I picked my way down the steep trail; snowgrass began to dominate the understorey, and at last the track opened up and levelled out and, suddenly, as if it had just materialised, Top Maropea hut appeared.

 

The small terrace on which the hut sits was almost completely covered with snow and gleamed in the afternoon sunlight and the hut itself also basked in the sunlight although thick snow still covered one corner of the roof and filled the guttering. The interior smelt of cold ashes and smoke and age, tinged with a hint of damp firewood but, perhaps because the sun was shining through the window over the bench, wasn’t as bitterly cold as I’d expected. That changed when the sun slid below the western ridge and the temperature fell like water draining from a sink. By then I had a fire going but in the breathless dusk the open fireplace struggled to draw and I had to leave the door ajar so the hut wouldn’t fill with smoke. The warmth from the fire was mostly psychological. 

That night I wore thick socks, down pants over geothermal long johns, two base layers, an alpha hoodie, a thick down jacket, a balaclava, and gloves — inside my sleeping bag. With the alpha and puffer hoods pulled up over the balaclava, I stayed comfortable, but by dawn the mug of warm water I’d placed within arm’s reach had iced over. The tap on the water tank had frozen, too, and I had to trickle hot water over it to get it flowing. I brewed Pu-erh tea and made porridge and pottered around as the dawn light strengthened. Knowing the track would be icy, I was in no hurry to leave and waited until mid morning to let the snow on the tops soften. As I closed the door and slid home the bolt I wondered about my next visit in a few weeks, when Robb and I would stay here overnight after six days deeper in the Ruahine. Always, though, the weather decides what happens. One December, Robb and our mate John and I had been blocked from Top Maropea by flooded rivers and had to find a different way out over the tops; on another occasion Robb and I arrived at Top Maropea as a storm set in and had to wait an extra day in the hut before crossing to Sunrise hut in driving snow. I hoped the forthcoming trip would be without drama, eventful only for the right reasons like meeting whio on the Maropea river, or weather like I’d had the previous day, or a comfortable night in a hut that stayed above freezing. But those plans have changed and now we’ll leave the Ruahine a different way, and I have no idea when I’ll see Top Maropea again. I hope it’s soon.

 

From the track high above Top Maropea I looked west across the centre of the Ruahine. Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe were as clearly defined as I’ve ever seen them. They looked like eruptions on the earth’s crust, as if enormous pressure had burst up through the skin of the land — which is, I suppose, exactly how they’d formed. I stood in the sunlight and, through binoculars, scanned the slips and clearings on the far side of the steep valley, wondering whether any deer had lingered to enjoy the morning’s warmth but, save for the desultory calls of a few silvereyes passing through the scrub and, once, the astonishingly loud and clear and beautiful call of a korimako, the mountain seemed strangely abandoned. I carried on, over the summit through crunching snow and down to the saddle and on to Sunrise where I stopped briefly to return Geoff’s spikes[2] and chat with him and with Brett. 

Then, all that remained was the trudge down the track to my unexpected meeting with the toutouwai and, at last, to the car and the long drive home.

 

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Notes:
1. Later, going through the photos at home, I realised I’d been watching two different individuals, both toutouwai.
2. Geoff had insisted I take his shoe spikes; he and Brett were convinced the track would be dangerously icy. It wasn’t, but I deeply appreciated their concern.

Photos (remember to open them for a better view): 
1. One of the toutouwai. The very dark grey colouration suggests this is an adult male but I've been unable to get authoritative confirmation yet.
2. The track along the tops above Armstrong Saddle, headwaters of the Waipawa river below, on the first day.
3. Route along the tops back to Armstrong Saddle. Those are my footprints from the previous day.
4. Ruapehu (L) and Ngauruhoe (R) from high on the track from Top Maropea to the tops.
5. Looking back towards Armstrong Saddle, Main Ruahine range in the background, on the first day.

Photos and original text © 2026 Pete McGregor