Thread: Ruahine Ranges...Tamaki

Originally Posted by Scribe

Thar or Dundee have either of you got photos of the massive thickets of Leatherleaf that abound on your end of the range. It is amazing that a number of hunters have never come in contact with it. Thar has got some leatherleaf with snow on it in one of his photos Leatherleaf covered in snow does make for some of the hardest going I have ever experienced. In some places in the Ruahines you can find yourself having to clamber over the top of the stuff for a couple of hundred yards before you break into the sub alphine belt or out onto the tussock.
Some days in winter we might of had to cross the tops in a couple of feet of snow. It wasnt bad if the ice crust was thick enough but when you started to break through the ice crust it would cut all the skin of your shins. The cold would stop you feeling anything but you would look back and see that you were leaving quite a blood trail across the snow behind you. For the rest of the winter you would never successfully grow skin back on your shins. Hunting in crown fern and leatherleaf would see to that. Leatherleaf in particular used to rip any new skin off you with its jagged sawblade leaves.
When I was out hunting in the winter to feed track cutting and tree planting gangs I used to climb up on the tops after a fresh snowfall. It was amazing how many deer would be out on the tops on a sunny day. Nearly all of the deer in the area trekked up to the sub alpine belt to get all the leaves off the broadleaf and many other tasty plants that the snowfall had weighed down within reach of them. It is a great way to learn about how a deer thinks and behaves and that is by getting on a deers tracks after a fresh snowfall and just following them until you catch up with them. Particularly a couple of young stags they tend to travel more freely and take in the sights more than all the others.
Leatherleaf is great firewood, burned green or dry. When green it takes a bit of other wood to get it going. Like a lot of alpine woods it is quite dense. Burned green it produces huge hot embers that are great for cooking on and keeping the hut warm, they are the best for making good bread. I can almost smell the smell now of burning leatherleaf and baking bread in Purity, Mackinnon, Top Marapea and a couple of dozen other alpine huts around the country as I sit here.

Here you go. A little south of Tamaki.



My mate after we spent a night out in the leatherleaf in the snow with kapok sleeping bags and wrapped in a blown down un-bleached sheeting tent...