We welcome new people at all club activities.
Nau mai, haere ki te rōpū hikoi o te pae maunga o Tararua
Welcome to the Tararua Tramping Club.
Interested in outdoor activities, simply need some healthy exercise, and want to meet some friendly people? We may have what you're looking for.
Established in 1919, TTC is the longest established tramping club in Wellington with over 600 members. Tramping and day walks are our most popular activities, and there are many other ways you can enjoy yourself with the club, including family trips, snow sports, biking, youth programme and climbing and mountaineering. Have a look at our activities and trips for more details.
TTC is one of some 300 outdoor recreational clubs and societies affiliated to the Federated Mountain Clubs of Aotearoa.
Mana Whenua
Ngā Mana Whenua o te pae maunga o Tararua (of the Tararua mountain range): ko Rangitāne; ko Muaūpoko; ko Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga; ko Ngāti Toa Rangatira; ko Te Ātiawa Taranaki Whānui, me ko Te Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai.
Tararua Tramping Club recognises and acknowledges the Mana Whenua o te pae maunga o Tararua.
What's in a Name?
The club takes its name from "Te pae maunga o Tararua", the "Tararua mountain range" (see a map) lying about 50km north of Wellington and covering 155,000 hectares.
Our club name is pronounced Tah-rah-ru-ah. The 'a' sound is that in the word 'are', and 'u' sound as in the word 'two'. You can hear Tararua spoken here.
What's in Te Pae Maunga Tararua
This is a rugged area of steep sided hills covered largely in native beech forest with wind-lashed ridges of rotten rock and tussock grass rising to over 1,500 metres in places. On a fine summer's day the ridges and peaks provide great views not only of the Tararua range itself, but far beyond to Taranaki Mounga in the north-west, the Wairarapa valley in the east, south to Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and the Kaikoura range and west to Kāpiti Island and the Marlborough Sounds. For some of the winter snow blankets the higher bush and the tops - an awesome place to be when the weather is kind!
On the sides of the ranges precipitous streams flow from the open tops, down through the beech forest, combining to form rivers sometimes flowing along open grassy valleys and sometimes slowing to form deep pools in narrow gorges.
The Tararua Range was first Forest Park in Aotearoa. By reputation it is a beautiful, but also a potentially dangerous place. Storms sweep the Tararua tops on average 200 days a year and several hunters and trampers have perished there since the early 1900s, but don't let that put you off, we are highly safety concious.
Tramping is the Kiwi description for an outdoor recreational activity that could be considered a mix of hiking, river crossing, bush-walking, and climbing. One of our members, Tony Nolan, once described it as:
offering an element of adventure and demanding a higher level of mental and physical effort.".
Just to clarify matters, in case you're not a Kiwi, a person who goes tramping (not hiking) is called a tramper (not hiker or a tramp!) and they carry their food, clothes, and equipment in a pack (not a rucksack, not even a back-pack ... just a pack).
Organised tramping began in Aotearoa with the formation in 1919 of the Tararua Tramping Club and many geographical features of the Tararua Range bear the names of some of our earlier members.
Te pae o Tararua is a popular area for our club trips but we run trips into almost all the significant ranges, forest parks and national parks of Aotearoa. Further afield, club expeditions have gone to almost every continent of the world.
Emblem
The club emblem is a flowering Leucogenes leontopodium - more commonly known as the North Island New Zealand Edelweiss. This emblem and the distinct logo incorporating it was created in 2010. It appears on our various publications, badges and on the sticker that trip leaders put in hut log books.
However, to see the real thing you'll have to get onto the tops! In the summer months it flowers in abundance and is a familiar sight to anyone who has climbed Mount Holdsworth at that time. It also makes its appearance in the Nelson ranges of the South Island.
Purposes
(from section 1.5 of the Tararua Tramping Club Constitution)
The purposes of the Club are to:
- encourage walking, tramping, climbing, mountaineering, skiing and other associated activities
- develop and foster skills and knowledge, and safe and environmentally sound practice in these activities by providing instruction and trips
- protect the natural environment, restore the environment, and actively work to these ends
- endeavour to maintain and develop public access to areas for tramping and other associated activities
- assist in the development and maintenance of tracks and huts where these are appropriate
- encourage and facilitate fellowship and social interaction among Members
- provide resources related to the Club activities through a website, club magazine, library and archives
- contribute to the funds of any other body having purposes consistent with the Club’s purposes
- acquire property for Club purposes, and dispose of it when no longer required
- work with government, local bodies, or with any club, committee, society, institution, or person to promote the Club’s purposes.
See also