Kapakapanui
03/05/2024
In March 2019 Kapakapanui was first activated by a friend of mine, Steve ZL2YD. It was his first activation and quite an achievement. Not too long after he became a silent key. I didn’t do the activation with him but chased him on the day. So a SOTA complete was waiting for me. For a long time, I had been getting a glimpse of Kapakapanui as we drove past Waikanae heading north or south on the expressway. Through a gap in the foothills behind the town, it’s easy to see as you fly on past. Also in my time as a LandSAR and AREC volunteer, I’d been involved in a few searches that had teams covering the loop track over the mountain and other connected tracks. Though I hadn’t walked it yet myself, I felt I knew it quite well, by following the progress of teams from the operations room, or at staging somewhere. It was time I knocked it off.
The track start point is about 1 1/2 hours from home, so I started out quite early, aiming to be boots on the ground by 7:30am. From the car park at the end of Ngatiawa Road, the track follows the Ngatiawa River upstream for 15-20 minutes. There are perhaps half a dozen river crossings, the water up to knee height at times. I knew about this in advance so I kept my boots off and wet shoes on for that first part, hiding the wet shoes in the bush at the base of the start of the loop track. This ensured dry boots for the duration and I’d be back this way to get the wet ones. No sense in carrying them up the hill.
From this point, it’s pretty much a steep uphill climb to the summit, with 900 meters of vertical gain up to the 1100-meter summit. Beautiful native bush and the occasional view through the trees. Did I mention this one is steep?
Three hours later I popped out of the bush and was greeted with some of the nicest views I had seen in a while. From the trig, one can see almost the entire western flank of the southern Tararua range. To the north is Mt Ruapehu and views all the way south down the coast toward Wellington. Well worth the effort, Just stunning!
Setting up at the trig was very pleasant with hardly a breeze and a beautiful sunny day. Starting on 40 meters before rollover, I had a steady stream of ZL chasers looking for contacts. 40 meters was the strong band on the day, with most of my 30 or so contacts before and after rollover on that band, just a couple of VKs came through on 20 meters. One of those VK’s was a summit to summit and another four summit to summits were had with ZL stations. All in all, it was a great activation in a beautiful location.
The activation was over and it was time for the bit I wasn’t looking forward to, the steep downhill, retracing my steps. Popular advice on this track is to continue and finish the loop in an anticlockwise direction as it’s a much friendlier gradient, be it a greater distance to travel. I was wishing I had made this one an overnighter to complete the entire track. Once on the summit Kapakapanui hut is enticingly close and a convenient place to overnight and finish the loop refreshed the next day. But I had left my intentions and stuck to my plan. Two and a half hours later I had made it back to my hidden wet shoes and it would be fair to say I was knackered, especially my legs! They were pretty sore for a couple of days after that one.
Summit – Kapakapanui ZL1/WL-016
Height: 1102m
Access – from Waikanae take Reikorangi road for about five km, then turn into Ngatiawa Road and follow it to its end. The car park is on private property. You walk through private property to get to the track start point. Everything is well signposted. Once on the main track, you are on public conservation land.
Cell signal – fair signal from One NZ.
ZL2ATH 