ZL1/NL-002 Tutamoe

New Years Day! This is the second highest summit in Northland, so I figured it would be a good challenge for New Years Day for 2021/2022. Northland put on a beautiful day for this walk.

The walk starts through forestry and doesn’t follow the track shown on the topo maps, however it is fairly obvious where to go. The right hand turn (see photo above) is to another a forestry track (not into the trees). Soon along that track it turns left again into the trees and up onto a ridge. The track follows the forestry / bush boundary for a bit and then over a style and down into the bush. The track is a gentle grade up to the final climb where it gets a bit steep. 3 hours to ascend at my pace (the 1 hour 45 on the sign is a bit light in my view).

Up the top there is not a lot of real estate so the dipole was thrown out across the bushes. There is a trig with a disused aerial bolted to it. I managed to summit this by 10.30 am so I had a bit of time to work a few. 2.5 hours netted me 38 contacts (my largest haul yet) including 20 summit to summit contacts. After roll over I made a further 24 contacts including 17 summit to summits. After 1400 (local) I packed up, but before I did I was visited by a couple of inactive hams – N7RLT Mark and N7RLU Robyn. A good chat about engineering, radio and SOTA ensued.

This is a great summit and well worth the walk. The views from the top are almost 360 degrees. The map below shows the lower half of the track. The upper half follows the topo track.

Summit – ZL1/NL-002 Tutamoe

Height – 770 mASL (climb 650 m)

Access – From Tangowahine Road (Start of the track is near where the airstrip is marked on the map)

Coverage – Good coverage

Summit Marker – Trig

Land Access Permission – Not required (Doc track)

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