The SEVENTEENERS

North Island trampers are often considered impoverished by their southern counterparts, and to some extent that’s true. We northerners don’t have anywhere near the selection of summits, the range of ranges, nor the mightiest mountains.

But that doesn’t mean the North Island doesn’t offer a considerable number of interesting mountains. Of course we can always brag about the volcanoes, something the southerners don’t have, but what about the non-volcanic peaks?

The author of a recent book claimed that the Ruahine’s Te Hekenga (1695m) was ‘among the 10 highest non-volcanic peaks in the North Island’. That didn’t seem quite right to me, so I consulted my maps, and came up with a definitive list of peaks over 1700m. Conveniently for northern peak baggers, this totals to the