This article was first published in the Tararua Tramper Volume 93, no 1, February 2021
Orbit over Dagg - M
January 10, 2021
We approached Dagg1 from The Pines (Upper Waingawa Road end). About 500 m along the Barra Track access road, and with the land owner’s permission, we swung right onto a well-formed four-wheel-drive track that carried us all the way north to Dagg (760 m). We had good views of the Tararua tops from Holdsworth to Mitre and Peggy and beyond, although the Kings were shrouded in cloud.
The top of Dagg, by no means obvious, was identified with the usual aids but we were unable to pinpoint the site of the now-demolished Dagg Hut,2 even though some in the party had been there on earlier trips.
Travel to Dagg took no more than 2 ½ hours including photographic and refreshment stops. To round out the trip we returned to Blake Stream watershed ridge and continued northwest, into the forest. At Bump 632 we dropped about 40 m to the saddle below Blake and then turned southwest to descend a minor tributary of Blake Stream. Rough going but perhaps still M grade. After some 75 minutes of slow progress and about one km from the saddle we reached the main stream and there forsook the streambed, travelling first on the true right of the stream and then the true left. In less than an hour we were back in farmland.
1John Rhodes’ place name origins compendium states that James George Dagg (1855-1935) was a farmer at Kaituna near Masterton. 2Peter Barber explains how he viewed the hut site on the web: Google Earth shows today’s location back only as far as 2010, so I had a look on Hut Bagger. Mt. Dagg Hut was a little further on from where we stopped for morning tea; now a small triangle of grassy land. If you enlarge the HutBagger map and choose Satellite instead of Map, then the site is displayed: Mt Dagg Hut
- Party members
- Peter Barber, Colin Cook (leader and scribe), Russell Cooke, Tricia French, David McNabb, Dave Reynolds, Janette Roberts, Tim Stone.