Te Atuaoparapara via Sunrise Hut, Waipukurau

NZ hikesvery long hikesNorth Islandmy favoritessnow
Written By Mark Eaglesfield

Te Atuaoparapara (1687) is a very long hike in the Ruahine Range of Central Hawke’s Bay, North Island. I reached it from the eastern side of the range, by continuing uphill past the popular Sunrise Hut and over Armstrong Saddle, then continuing south. The nearest towns are Waipawa and Waipukurau, both around 45 minutes away; the village of Ongaonga is around 30 minutes away.

My route, and the route from the south via Waipawa Saddle, start from North Block Road end. Together they make a circuit. As of September 2023, North Block Road is inaccessible due to a road closure, so neither route is accessible. Te Atuaoparapara remains accessible from the west, but it would probably be a multi-day trip.

Time

Wilderness Magazine estimates that it takes 4-5 hours from the parking lot to the peak.

Including breaks, the hike took me around 11 hours 10 minutes. Excluding my longest break, this involved roughly:

  • 2 hours 10 minutes from the parking lot to Sunrise Hut;

  • 3 hours 20 minutes more to reach the peak;

  • 5 hours 10 minutes to return to the parking lot.

Route

The parking lot is at North Block Road end, which does not actually look like the real end of North Block Road on Google Maps. (Perhaps the remainder is farm property with no public easement.) To reach the parking lot, I had to drive through 2-4 farm gates.

As I got out of the car, I saw a flock of turkeys, apparently sharing a pasture with sheep.

The blue dot shows Sunrise Hut. The purple dot shows the fork with the route to Top Maropea Hut.

Screenshots of the NZ topographic map are licensed as CC BY 4.0 by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).

There are at least two ways, each taking a few minutes, to reach the forest margin where the track really begins. The official one is a footpath through the grass, while the other is a farm track. Once in the forest, Sunrise Track is an easy ascent to Sunrise Hut.

Beyond Sunrise Hut, the track narrowed and became rougher. It was slow in the morning snow, and slow in the afternoon mud left behind by the snow. It might have been better with neither snow nor mud. This track leads to Armstrong Saddle (site of a famous disappearance - see links at foot of page), and then up the hill to the left (south). This hill turns into a ridge. On it, there is a fork, with the left (southwest) track leading to Te Atuaoparapara and the right (north) track leading to Top Maropea Hut.

I followed the track to the left, down a long descent to a bushy saddle. Getting past these dense shrubs and small trees was the most challenging part of the hike. Luckily, there was pink tape from time to time to guide me. I don’t recall any speargrass.

Above the bushline, the route was straightforward. There was a drop-off on the left (east) side as I ascended the slope beyond the bushy saddle. At some points, to put some distance between myself and the drop-off (it was misty), I moved a few meters away and scrambled uphill through the tussock instead.

After a while of this, I reached the prominent false summit. It was another 10 or 20 minutes to the true summit. A lot of snow had melted on my descent - compare the two pictures at the top of this page.

If 1 is an easy track, and 4 is using hands and feet on exposed rocks, I give this hike a 1 up to Sunrise Hut, and a mixture of 3 and 2 beyond it.

This hike reminded me more of my favorite South Island hikes than any other hike I’ve done on North Island, both because it was very long and because of the terrain/vegetation. I rarely see tussock on North Island.

Hunting

Nearly the entire route is in a hunting area. Hunters are forbidden to “discharge firearms near tracks, huts, campsites, road-ends or any other public place.” I have hiked in more than 30 hunting areas, and only passed hunters twice - this wasn’t one of those hikes.

Here is the DOC topomap with all hunting areas visible.

Other pages about this hike

Other pages about Sunrise Hut only

Pages about the Waipawa Saddle circuit over Te Atuaoparapara

Pages about other hikes involving Te Atuaoparapara

Pages about nearby hikes

Local history

He was never seen again. That tragedy brought home to local trampers the need for some form of organisation to mount searches and rescues in the mountains of Hawke’s Bay. And so the Heretaunga Tramping Club was born. On 30 September 1935, 16 trampers assembled in Doctor David Bathgate’s rooms in Hastings and made the decision to form a tramping club, the objective of which was ‘to familiarise members with the back country of Hawke’s Bay’… Since that fateful day Hamish Armstrong disappeared, only two people lost in the Hawke’s Bay bush have not been found.

-Alan Berry, 2015

Glenda from Heretaunga Tramping Club tells me that Norman recorded Te Atuaoparapara as meaning “A place of snow and the dregs or leaving of a southerly gale". Parapara means rubbish or leftovers, while atua (normally related to a deity) seems to have a non-obvious translation; o is a preposition. Perhaps Norman’s translation can be shortened to “snow left over from the southerly gale”.

Do you know how the local iwi translates the name from Māori? If so, please let me know.

At one point, the peak was known as Sixty-six.

Mark Eaglesfield
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