Rangihaeata tramper clocks up 1000 huts
Last summer, veteran tramper Paul Kilgour completed an 85-day traverse of the length of the South Island, all along the backcountry from Puysegur Point to Uruwhenua. This summer he clocked up the 1000th backcountry hut of his tramping career.
That event happened on 5 January while Paul was on a five-day trip to the Tararua Ranges, where he stopped at Waihopehu Hut for lunch before carrying onward to score another four over the following few days. He recalls: “The weather was atrocious much of the time; thank goodness for the shelter of those huts. As far as a hut went, Waihopehu was no big deal, basically a newish hut with a superb outlook. But what impressed me was how the history had been recorded there on a wall display.”
He found out how the first hut there had been blown away in a violent storm in 1936, just as some trampers were about to reach it. A tramper who died in that storm is buried in a marked grave nearby. Another hut replaced the original in 1947, and the third (which Paul visited) replaced that again in 2002.
“These huts all have their stories, a record of our human history they have become.” It has been Paul’s meticulous recording of every tramping trip since his very first up the Waimakariri Valley when he was 19, with his first overnight at the White River Hut, that made possible his accurate counting. “I still recall the snow on the ground outside, the musty smell of the bush all around and the smokiness of the hut. I got instantly hooked on tramping.”
It was only about five years ago that Paul got out all his notebooks and started going through them, retracing his routes on maps and counting the huts he’d been through. The Department of Conservation website estimates around 950 backcountry huts on their management list, so Paul has obviously found a few more than are commonly used by the public. “One of the most remote huts I stayed in was Crooked Stream Hut, down from Lake Morgan, inland from Lake Brunner. I arrived on a New Year’s Eve at the end of 2004 and there hadn’t been an entry in the hut book for two years. Hurricane Hut up the Matiri tops was another memorable one for me as far as getting that feeling of remoteness goes.” Interestingly, the Ruahine Forest Park, where Paul has yet to venture, boasts the most huts in this country (62), slightly more than Kahurangi National Park with 60, and Fiordland’s 52. The country’s largest hut, with 80 bunks, is Pinnacles Hut in the Coromandel Forest Park.
Ask Paul about his next challenge and he laughs: “Maybe I earned some braggin’ rights now, so I might just retire and take a rest!” You can tell though, from how he still takes every opportunity to eye up the mountains from his Frasers Road backyard, that somehow he’s only joking.
Gerard Hindmarsh
