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From two-person shelters to a 54-bunk fortress, New Zealand’s countryside is scattered with huts that offer weary hikers a safe place to rest. Some huts sit along the popular Milford and Routeburn tracks, others are perched in remote valleys in the wilderness, with views ranging from snowy peaks to flourishing bush.
But the publicly owned network is too vast for the government to maintain, so ordinary people in New Zealand are filling their backpacks with cleaning supplies and hiking into the hills to clean and maintain the huts.
Among them is Suzie Bell, who moved from the UK to New Zealand in 2010. She soon discovered “tramping” – or hiking – and recalls her amazement at coming across the huts for the first time.
“The fact that there are these epic huts in the middle of nowhere that you can go and stay in for next to nothing, I was just blown away,” she says.
Most of the huts are accessible only on foot. Trampers carry in food, and take out their rubbish. The smaller huts, with four or fewer bunk beds, are free to use.
“I love the honesty box payment system in huts, the fact that everyone clears up after themselves and the total strangers that you meet, have dinner, play cards with and chat to,” Bell says.
Bell wanted to give something back and joined the “Love our Huts” cleaning campaign with her family.
The initiative was started by New Zealand outdoor recreation advocacy group Federated Mountain Club (FMC). More than 300 people have signed up for the campaign, FMC says.
“People really value our huts, they’re part of our cultural heritage, and we want them to last for ever,” FMC executive committee member and keen tramper Liz Wightwick says. “This campaign shows people are prepared to care for their huts.”
There are more than 950 huts across New Zealand. The first huts, built in the late 1800s, were used for gold mining, surveying and mustering. Later, they were used for conservation purposes, as shelters for deer hunters and forestry workers. The huts were brought under one national network in the late 1980s, managed by the Department of Conservation.
So far this summer, more than 500 huts have been spruced up by volunteers. Loaded with rubber gloves, a newspaper to wipe windows, and dissolvable sachets of cleaning products, psychologist Jo Clark and her two daughters hiked for five hours to help clean Clark Hut in Fiordland national park.
Freda Clark, 13, says she and her sister Ada, 11, wiped down mattresses, cleaned windows and pulled out surrounding weeds. “The huts don’t really get cleaned unless people like us do it.”
Sustaining the hut network is challenging due to its size, remoteness and the threat of severe weather, says the conservation department’s acting director of heritage and visitors, Eamonn Whitham.
“We could not maintain our network without the enthusiastic New Zealanders giving their energy and labour to keep our special, much-loved huts and tracks safe and maintained.”
Many huts are isolated and visited only a few times a year, like Top Otoroh Bivvy, which Wightwick cleaned after an eight-hour hike up into the Kelly Ranges. For some helpers, like Bell, the initiative is about more than hut maintenance; it’s time carved out to reconnect with her family.
Reaching A-Frame Hut, in the Hakatere Conservation Park, after four hours of tramping through rolling tussock hills – an ambitious feat for little legs – Bell and her children, Liam, five, and James, seven, got to tidying.
“I’m always trying to teach the kids to leave things better than you find them, and do something nice for the next person.”
Bell says it reflects the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga, where, as guardians of the environment, we must protect it for future generations.
“Many horrendous things are going on around the world, and it feels overwhelming. But I’m a big believer in finding stuff you can fix within your circle of control,” she says. “Like we can take care of the huts in our backyard.”
