The upper North Island is often touted as the winterless north, but trampers from the area say that’s not the case and more backcountry huts are needed.
Leading a group of young Aucklanders through torrential rain and a biting southerly, outdoor instructor Emily Wood found herself wishing for a nearby hut. The group was in the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park, gunning for their Duke of Edinburgh awards, when, as is often the case in this wild part of Auckland, the weather went south. They’d planned to camp at Whatipu, at the southern end of the ranges, but looking down on the valley they saw their plan was dashed. The wind was coming in straight off the Tasman and thrashing the coast. There was no way their tents could withstand the onslaught. So instead, Wood led her group to a sheltered valley where they spent a frigid wet and miserable night. Wood says nothing causes a group of teenagers to become grumpy more than a cold, damp night in a tent with wet gear to look forward to wearing the following morning. On the countless Duke of Edinburgh Hillary Award trips she’s led, Wood has experienced many similar situations and often wished there was a backcountry hut to stay in. “When you get a southerly wind coming through the campsite and the rain is coming down, you just don’t want to be there and it isn’t fun for the kids. It would be so much easier if there was a hut so they could light a fire and have their gear hanging up to dry. “Having a fire can up the morale of a group big time. It’s so much nicer to have four walls,” Wood says. She is annoyed there are so few backcountry huts in the upper North Island and would like to see more built. She doesn’t want “five-star hotels”, her term for some of DOC’s Great Walk huts, because they’re too comfortable for the groups she leads. Like all good outdoor instructors, Woods wants her students to expand their comfort zone by experiencing its edge. “I don’t want them to feel like they’re in a hotel because then they won’t grow,” she says. “But if there were more basic huts it would be fantastic. “I believe all youth should experience staying in huts as well as staying in tents. When staying in huts they learn to respect other people much more so than when camping.” Wood isn’t the only tramper annoyed about the lack of huts in the upper North Island. Bryan Dudley, the president of the Auckland Associated Mountain Clubs (AAMC), an umbrella group that advocates for 13 Auckland tramping clubs, and Auckland Tramping Club president Graeme McGowan both want DOC to build more huts in the upper North Island to foster recreation Both men are tired of hearing excuses from DOC about why it can’t. “We applaud DOC’s recreational role for those who live south of Lake Taupo,” says Dudley with a trace of irony in his voice. “But Northland, the Coromandel and the Kaimais have been neglected since management passed from the Forest Service to DOC. It is time to catch up with the rest of the country.” The Northland, Auckland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions contain nearly 50 per cent of New Zealand’s population, yet there are a total of 25 DOC huts combined in all of these regions, about one hut for every 88,000 people. In Marlborough, which has a total population of 42,549, there are 66 huts; 62 per cent more than the upper North Island even though Marlborough has only two per cent of its population. Stewart Island/Rakiura has 28 huts for a population of 402. That’s one hut for every 14 people. According to official information provided by DOC, in the 2012 financial year it spent a total of $26.9m on recreation in the Northland, Auckland, Waikato and the East Coast/Bay of Plenty conservancies. In the West Coast and Nelson Marlborough conservancies alone, DOC spent $26.8m despite these regions having a fraction of the population of the upper North Island. The 2012 expenditure on the Canterbury, Otago and Southland conservancies was $45.4m, 69 per cent more than the upper North Island’s share, even though the north’s population is 160 per cent larger. There are obvious reasons for the differences in expenditure, such as the department’s greater land holdings in the South Island and the extra cost of maintaining popular tracks and Great Walks. For Dudley and McGowan, however, these statistics reveal an imbalance and when out exploring the backcountry this is most obvious by the lack of huts in the upper North Island. “Half the population of New Zealand has ready access to just six per cent of the huts in New Zealand,” Dudley says. “The ratio of facilities to population needs looking at and some degree of fairness sorted out. “That doesn’t mean 450 of the 950 DOC huts have to be shifted north of Lake Taupo, but if the number of huts in the north increased by one per cent of the total, it would make a huge difference.” On top of this imbalance, Dudley says of the 25 backcountry huts in the north, 10 are also now included in DOC’s booking system so are unavailable to backcountry hut pass holders. DOC’s website technology means any hut included in its booking system is automatically removed from the backcountry hut pass for the entire year. “For some time we have been trying to save Aucklanders from paying for local huts twice, once through purchasing the annual hut pass and again on booking as the hut pass is not accepted at Coromandel, Great Barrier and Northland huts,” says Dudley. “DOC’s latest response has been to increase the number of huts we have to pay twice for.” In 2011, the AAMC made a special appeal to the Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC) for help in addressing the devalued hut pass, but things have only got worse with DOC recently announcing Waitawheta Hut in Kaimai-Mamaku Forest Park will be included in the booking system. DOC acknowledges there is an issue in the northern part of the North Island with its annual hut pass. A spokesperson said it intends to revise the current online booking system by July 2013 and will establish criteria to address the issue of bookable huts and the value of the annual hut pass throughout New Zealand. However, this won’t solve the problem of too few huts in the north. DOC recreation managers Gavin Walker and Richard Davies lead the teams in DOC’s Wellington HQ that decide how best to spend the department’s recreation budget to foster recreation. Davies is the immediate past president of the FMC which advocates on behalf of tramping and mountaineering clubs around the country and is familiar with the issue from both sides of the fence. In 2010, under his leadership, FMC held a conference attended by northern recreation groups to discuss outdoor recreation opportunities in the north and came up with a list of ideas to increase recreation, including more huts in Northland forests, on the Coromandel Peninsula and in the Kaimais. Club members suggested building basic huts and, in sheltered areas, cheaper three-sided structures. New tracks were also suggested. [caption id="attachment_19783" align="aligncenter" width="900"]
