SOUTHERN BRANCHES OF THE TARARUAS.
The southern end of the Tararuas is featured in the landscape by Mount Alpha (4467 feet) and its satellite peak The Quoin. Omega (3669 feet) is eastward of Alpha, and Renata (3018 feet) is westward.
Alpha and The Quoin are cut off on the west by a depression in which flows, on the one side, the Waiotauru tributary of the Otaki (flowing to the West Coast), and on the other side, the Western (lesser) branch of the Hutt (flowing to Port Nicholson).
On the other (western and south-western) side of these streams rises a group of peaks which must be deemed an offshoot of the Tararuas. The highest is Kapakapanui (behind Reikorangi township, and mapped as 3615 feet); and from Kapakapanui southward are no less than four peaks, each of which is over 2000 feet, including Maymorn (overlooking the higher Hutt River) and Wainui (near the coast, overlooking Paekakariki).
This block of country, watered by the Whakatiki and Akatarawa tributaries of the Hutt River, and by tributaries of the Waikanae, is very little known, and is an attractive wilderness. It contains a Government reserve, but there is a great deal of bush outside this reserve, the extension of which is one of the definite needs of the moment.
The series of peaks referred to in the last paragraph constitutes one prong of a fork into which the Tararua range divides near Alpha. The other prong is the Rimutaka range, which includes the Orongorongos.
The connecting link between the Alpha and the Rimutaka-Orongorongo range is Omega and Mount Marchant, 3406 feet, which latter will be made the pivot on which the concluding portion of this article is based.
Anyone looking from Wellington up the Hutt Valley on a fine day will see The Quoin in the centre of the picture, with the more lofty Alpha looking over its shoulder. (Often the two look in the distance like one mass, but the Alpha summit sometimes carries snow when The Quoin has none.)
On the right is a long-backed ridge, easily distinguishable, and that is Marchant. Still further to the right is the well-known Rimutaka-Orongorongo range, to which Marchant acts as link.
In order from Marchant southwards, the main peaks of the Rimutaka-Orongorongos are: Rimutaka (2389 feet), Climie (2823 feet), Baubau (2657 feet), Orongorongo (2676 feet), Puketaha (2516 feet), Papatahi (2957 feet), and (rising on the approach to Palliser Bay) Matthews (3079 feet).
Somewhat westward of this line of peaks are two lofty ones of the same series: High Misty, 2353 feet, which is between the headwaters of the Orongorongo River and the Mangaroa tributary of the Hutt. The other is M’Kerrow, 2265 feet, located between the Wainui-o-mata and the Orongorongo rivers.
