What I meant to say about the Dingle Route is that he followed the tops south to Holdsworth before heading down the Waiohine and Tauherenikau valleys.
A bloke named Colin Rolfe , top mountain runner,scaled all the Tararua peaks over 3000 feet in 24 hours. I believe that it will take someone pretty special to equal this feat.I believe he started from the north end and got to Hector and realised he had to do Alpha and come back to do one on the Winchcombe Ridge....anyone whos done the Neil -winchcombe will know that its a challenge by itself. Colin would run from Kaitoke to Otaki fairly regularly . I recall sitting on the side of Alpha near dusk watching a couple of deer when i noticed a " shape " moving up the track from Alpha Hut, turned out to be Colin. He stopped , we had a chat , he put on his head torch and galloped of into the sunset. An oustanding athlete in top physical condition.
I'm hoping this is all NAMED peaks. Just been looking at the map - there'd be a huge amount of dropping down side ridges to get to outlying numbered peaks if they too are included, then climbing back up again.
More I look at this, the more I wonder at the achievement. Even looking at named 1000m peaks, there's Cone, there's Orewa, Notoriwa (am I the only one that laughs at that name?), Te Mara above Blue Hut, Kapakapanui, Tawhiritahuku behind Shannon - all way off the main two ranges. Then you've all the side-peaks like Elder, Quoin, Herapai, ...
Then, if you include not just 1000m peaks, but all 3000 foot (914m) peaks it gets even worse
It sounds as if it was a while back. Maybe it was before the tectonic plate movement had pushed so much of the range above 3000 feet. :-P
Back in the 70's a popular hard trip was to do all the 5000ft peaks in a weekend When they changed the maps to metric it went to all the peaks over 1500 meters which added a few more. But to do all the 3000 footers would be bloody hard. Another trip people tried was from Kaitoke up the main range to Arete and back to Kaitoke via Tarn ridge Girdlestone Holdsworth. I don't know if anybody ever managed it.
It looks as if Colin Rolfe is still around if anyone's keen to track him down and ask him about the 3000 foot peaks. He won the 40+ age group of the Tararua Mountain Race as reported in April 2010, in 5h 34m 26s, http://www.tararua-race.org.nz/news.htm , and holds 3 of the 5 fastest times for Individual Men as set in the late 90s.
He can't have been around much longer than the metric system, though given the results and categories. Maybe there's another one?
20 minutes before the madpom ...
That's impressive! Do you know him?
Colin did the odd bit of work for DOC . I recall him coming to Alpha Hut to paint the interior after Ken Robertson had done the extensions to the existing hut , i was helping Ken at the time. Colin arrived via the Reeves , Omega tracks with a full pack in under 5 hrs . I had shot a stag and had a camp oven full of veges , potatoes and prime venison .Colin arrived , asked if there was anything in the camp oven then proceded to demolish most of it.Certainly burnt the calories that boy!
Another training run of his was Otaki Forks - Waitewaewae - Junction Knob-Andersons Hut -Maungahuka-Kime-Fields-home.
It was on one of these runs when the weather clagged in that he came across several tramps between McIntosh and Field Peak , and noticed that they had day packs!Lucky he asked one of them where they were headed "back to Otaki Forks-just on a day trip up to Kime and back "was the reply.Colin then turned around and ran back up the track to tell the other "day trippers " to find reverse gear, made sure all were accounted for and then continued on his run back to Kime.
