After Tuesday’s cold snap blew through, we woke Wednesday morning to the Wharepapa/Arthur Range looking like this. The pyramid-looking mountain in the foreground that doesn’t have snow on it is Sugar Loaf. Sugar Loaf is 1081 metres high and lies between the Pearse and Graham Rivers, which feed the Motueka River. Mountains called “sugar loaf” are named after sugarloaves, the hard, conical forms in which sugar was sold until people started getting the stuff in paper and plastic bags. So common is the use of “sugarloaf” to name a steeply conical mountain that Wikipedia has a List of mountains named Sugarloaf. The list has three geographical features named after sugarloaves in New Zealand alone, not including the one in the photo.
