Thread: Rangi hut in the Ruahines

Originally Posted by Murray N

This thread has taken me back in time , over 55 years in fact to when i first hunted deadmans , not much of a track back then but we made do , one winter we decided to recut the track which we often used until DOC found it and that was the end of that , we would walk up the main Rangi track for 20 min before climbing up through the bush which brought us out at the top of the first steep part at the start of Deadmans , out track finished at the first patch of tussock , although we pushed on a few times the leatherwood was hard work , instead from the first patch of tussock we cut a track down a spur to the South and up to the ridge on the other side , on the other side of the ridge is a beautiful warm sheltered basin which you can not see from Deadmans , Rex Thompson had told me about this basin as Rex and his Brothers had hunted for skins many years before , there wires for drying skins where still strung between the Mountain Cedars , Rex wrote a book called ( What A Life ) and lived just north of Rangiwahia in the early years of his life , much of the book is about his time hunting that area and further north as far as the Pourangaki , where they would take there horses up through the bush and onto the tussock tops .
We did quite well in the sheltered basin and would either carry them out whole or pin bone them and continue on and do the Rangi Loop .

@Murray N There was an old skin hunters track through Murray Thompson's place straight to that basin (fruit cake gully we called it). About 1970 myself and 2 mates opened it up for meat hunting. We spent many days opening it up cutting new routes and detours and I think left a bit of a legacy. It forked at the Maungora creek. Left fork (across the creek) to the basin and straight ahead to the tussock tops looking into the Orua. On the main track to the tops we had a fly camp by a big broad leaf (that had an old slasher of ours embedded in it) where you enter the leather wood. In the end some low life cleaned our stuff out. Nowadys you can access both of those tracks from the end of Bowling road.

@25/08 IMP dis you go up last week end?