Nomenclature of huts in New Zealand

 Know the descriptive language of backcountry huts...

Serviced, standard, bivy or lodge...backcountry huts in New Zealand have a language of their own. It can sometimes be confusing to the new hut user or international visitor to decipher what people are talking about when it comes to huts. 

Hut, bivouac or shelter...which is it?

I thought we could have a look at the nomenclature (the name or designation) used to describe our backcountry retreats in this country. 

The different type of huts:

There are several different types of huts in the New Zealand backcountry most of which correspond to the terminology used by the department of conservation. Both DOC, outdoor user groups, government departments and individuals have taken to using the official designation when talking about a hut. These generally relate to the use the building is intended for, its size, level of amenity and ownership. 

Lets have a look a these designations...

Lodges:

These are the crème of the crop of backcountry structures and are usually intended for well heeled patrons willing to pay a higher price for a greater level of comfort. They will have the most comfortable features and might even include things like a la carte meals, showers, beds with linen and alcohol service. 

Glade House, Milford Track, Fiordland

You will tend to find lodges on very popular tracks as they need mass tourism to make economic sense. I have seen them on the Milford, Greenstone, Routeburn and Abel Tasman Tracks although I have never sampled their wares myself. They are also common near park entrances (Aoraki/Mt Cook Village, National Park/Arthurs Pass) and at ski fields. 

Quinton Lodge (40 bunks) Milford Track, Fiordland

The term 'Lodge' can be used in derision by some outdoor folk commenting on the overbuilt nature of some of the newer DOC huts like Pinnacles (80+ bunks!!!!)  in the Coromandel Peninsula. Personally I don't see why you need to 'rough it' all the time to be considered a real tramper...

Huts: Backcountry staple...

Your basic backcountry hut will generally be a 3-60+ person building intended for over night stays. It will usually have sleeping facilities and a living/cooking area and a veranda depending on size and age. There may be additional amenities like mud rooms, gas heaters, wood burners, water tanks, gas cookers etc. and most will have a handy river or rain tanks for water.  

12 bunk Speargrass Hut in Nelson Lakes NP

There are over 1200 public and private huts scattered around New Zealand and there would not be a district in the whole country that does not have a few. 

Woolshed Creek hut (24 bunks)...Hakatere Conservation area

There are more huts in the South Island than the North Island and the regions with the most huts are the Kawekas, Tararua Forest Park and right down the West Coast of the South Island. These huts were mostly built for government deer stalkers which is why so many are in these places as they all had high deer numbers. 

Bivouacs:

Bivouacs, biv's, bivvy's...different names for the same type of structure. They tend to be mini huts...smaller and with sometimes with less facilities. They range in size from tiny two person "dog box" structures up to small huts that hold 3-4 people. 

Hallelujah Bivouac...classic deer cullers shelter

They are generally located in more remote locations and are usually a hold over from the days when they were used by government deer stalkers (1940-1987). That said they are growing in numbers as they are cheaper and easier to build in our modern world of out of control building costs. 

Caroline Creek Bivouac (2 bunks) on the Waiau Pass Track

There are some damn fancy bivouacs out there like East Hawdon shown below and there are some real horrors but what all of them provide is basic shelter from the elements. 

East Hawdon Bivouac, Arthurs Pass NP...fancy digs!!!

If you are wet, cold and exhausted that is all you need...a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in and if you are lucky a fire to warm yourself with. 

Shelters:

There are many kinds of backcountry shelter mainly intended for day use or as a place of refuge on long and difficult tracks. I have visited almost as many shelters as huts over the years and you tend to find them at the start/finish of a track, on long track sections, campsites, ski fields, walking tracks and after long or difficult climbs/descents.

Andrews Shelter, Mt White Road, Arthurs Pass NP

The amenities in a shelter vary with its intended use so as basic as an open sided bare space with a dirt floor to fully enclosed structures with seating, benches, tables, cooking facilities, water and even fireboxes.

Maori Beach Shelter, Rakuira

 DOC have started building cooking shelters on a number of tracks with benches, tables and water for those who prefer a night under nylon. These make preparing food, eating and socialising with fellow trampers so much easier. 

Brod Bay Shelter, Kepler Track

There is no finer sight on a cold, wet day than a shelter to sit and eat your lunch in...wet lunch breaks are the bane of all trampers.

DOC hut descriptions:

The Department of Conservation have their own hut grading system as a means to describe the amenities each building contains. They also use the designations as a price point when deciding how much to charge for an overnight stay in that hut. These gradings are: Great Walk/Serviced/Standard/Basic

Great Walk:

Great Walk Huts have better amenities than other huts and are specific to the 10 Great Walks of New Zealand. They will have a bookable bunk for each visitor, tank water, heating with fuel provided, gas cookers, and a hut warden during the summer months. 

Moonlight Tops Hut, Paparoa Great Walk Track, Paparoa NP

Some Great Walk huts deserve the moniker but to be frank some of them are bloody awful...generally the older more remote huts are the least comfortable. The oldest huts are on the North Island Great Walks...the Tongariro Northern Circuit and Lake Waikaremoana. 

Bark Bay Hut in the Abel Tasman NP..my favorite GW hut!

Great Walks are all about volume...they normally cater for the vast tourist hordes on their conveyer belt like tracks. Because of this the huts tend to be bigger than on other tracks with more bunks and more living space. The largest GW huts are 50+ people like Luxmore on the Kepler Track or Mintaro on the Milford. The smallest GW huts are more like 20-30 people...

Luxmore Hut on the Kepler Track holds 55 people....

...while Porarairi Hut only holds 20!!!

Great Walk huts are also expensive..$30-$75 for Kiwis and $60-$150 for International visitors. If you are going to charge this much I expect to be tucked in at night, a cooked breakfast and a cuppa in bed in the morning...

Serviced:

Serviced huts are next down the list and will generally have most of the features of a Great Walk Hut but tend to be slightly older and smaller. They will generally hold from 10-30 people though Pinnacles Hut in the Coromandel is a 80 bunk serviced hut...

Speargrass Hut in Nelson Lakes NP

Crow Hut in Arthurs Pass NP

 Some of them have hut wardens and some of them can be booked but most are first come-first served. When you arrive you take a spare bunk if it is available...if the hut is full you will be sleeping on the hut floor or outside in the tent you should be carrying...

Casey Hut II (2021) is the newest Serviced hut in New Zealand...

 They are cheaper to stay in at $15-$20 per night and you can use a DOC Backcountry hut pass at most of these ones. 

Sabine Hut, Travers-Sabine Track, Nelson Lakes NP

You are going to strike Serviced huts on the more popular multi day tracks  like the Te Paki Track, Round the Mountain, Greenstone-Caples, Rees-Dart, Travers-Sabine Circuit, St James Walkway, Hollyford which exist outside the Great Walk network. 

Standard:

The most numerous hut group these have slightly reduced amenity levels and will tend to be smaller (6-12 bunks) in less visited areas. They usually have no firewood ( you need to find your own locally) or gas supplied for heating and water may be from a tank but more often from a nearby stream or river. 

Lower Princhester Hut, Takitimu Forest Park

No wardens or hut booking at any of these with the most common design being the classic New Zealand Forestry Service NZSF70 six bunk hut from the 1960's and 1970's. 

Anti Crow Hut, Arthurs Pass NP is a modified NZFS70...

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Trust-Poulter Hut, Arthurs Pass NP...another modified NZFS70

There are lots of standard huts in places like Fiordland NP, the West Coast, Tararuas, Kaweka's, Kaimaniwas, Kahurangi and Rakuira/Stewart Island.

Basic:

All the rest really...bivouacs, small 1-4 person huts, old musterer's huts, tent camps and anything over 60 years of age. They will tend to be older, dirtier and more ramshackle but they still do the business when required. 

West Harper Hut...open fireplace, dirt floors and sacking bunks!!!

Rokeby Hut on the St James Walkway

The upside of staying in a Basic hut is that DOC don't charge you for staying so if you are a budget conscious person look for this type of hut. This category also includes shelters even though you are not meant to sleep in them overnight...obviously use of a shelter is free.

Cobb Valley Tent Camp, Kahurangi NP...a Basic hut

Cobb Hut is another basic hut in Kahurangi NP...

I love basic huts as this is getting back to the most basic level of existence without living under nylon.  

Historic huts:

There is really another designation for DOC huts called Historic but it is not a separate category as most historic huts are not able to be used for overnight stays. They are being preserved for their historic value as they are very old, are the last of their kind, were the only hut in that area or have some other historical importance to the nation. 

Historic Jacks Hut in Arthurs Pass NP...

Lake Emma Hut, Hakatere Conservation Area is a historic station hut

There are a couple of notable historic huts that can be used for overnight stays including many in the Tararua Forest Park, Schutes Hut in the North Island and Myttons/Chaffeys Hut's in the Cobb Valley. There are many more but these are just a few examples... 

Chaffey's Hut (Cobb Valley) is a slab clad historic hut...

You can stay overnight in Bealey Spur/Top Hut (1905)...

Historic huts are scattered right across the country but a lot of them are located in the South Island as many were originally homesteads or old mustering huts. Many of these huts came into Crown ownership with land tenure reviews and generally DOC will only do vital restoration and maintenance work to keep them in existence. 

How huts are named:

I am not going to go too deep into how a hut gets its name because it is actually complicated enough for its own post. Naming of a new backcountry feature or structure is controlled...you may nominate a name for geographic features through LINZ. 

Mid Robinson Hut as shown on a LINZ 1/250 000 topo map....

As they are ultimately going to appear on the New Zealand topographic map series there are some basic tenets that must be followed:

No public hut to be named after a living person/entity 

Must be a unique name...not one in current use

No abusive/derogatory/objectionable names to be used

Final naming of huts is overseen by the New Zealand Geographical Board

In basic terms huts tend to be named after nearby geographic features like a hill, river, island, stream or track. This is a long standing and world wide practice as it is the most obvious way to make locating that feature easy. Examples would be Broken River Hut, Waitaki Forks Hut, Hellfire Pass Hut, Shallow Bay Hut and East Hawdon Bivouac. 

Shallow Bay Hut is in Shallow Bay, Lake Manapouri

Other huts will be named after some person of importance like a local explorer, DOC/NZFS ranger, historic run owner, land surveyor, naturalist and well known trampers. Leaders of tramping clubs seem popular as many of the original huts were built by tramping clubs and it was a means to remember great tramping companions. Examples are the Ces Clark Hut, Charlie Douglass Rock Bivouac, Field Hut, Carrington Hut and John Reid Hut.

John Tait Hut is named after a beloved NZFS Ranger...

There are a LOT of memorial huts named after people who died in some locale..often built as a hut in that location would have saved the person. Some of the stories behind memorial huts are very tragic with people lost in storms, drowned in rivers (...the New Zealand death...) or who disappeared never to be seen again. A good example is Fenella Hut named after Fenella Druce who died when Three Johns Hut (itself a memorial to dead climbers...) was blown off a ridge in Aoraki/Mt Cook NP. She and her three companions all perished. Her friends and family built Fenella Hut as a memorial to her memory...

Fenella Hut, Cobb Valley, Kahurangi NP

There are over 10 memorial huts in the Tararua's and I can think of five here in Canterbury which commemorate lost souls. A good example is the Manson-Nicholls Hut at Lake Daniell named after three trampers who died when the hut they were in was hit by a huge landslide in mid 1976. 

 

The old Manson-Nichols Hut at Lake Daniell

Another is Park-Morpeth named after two drowned trampers who were swept away while crossing a nearby river back in the 1930's.

Rebuilds and renovations:

You will often find that a hut or bivouac has been built in a nearly perfect spot somewhere so that if that structure needs to be replaced or rebuilt it will always be located in the same spot. This leads to a bit of confusion when people are talking about that hut and various ways have been adopted to describe which iteration of that hut you are talking about. 

This is Casey Hut (1976)....

...and this is Casey Hut (2021)!!!

If it is the first or second hut at that location you can refer to them as old or new i.e the old Manson-Nichols Hut or the new Manson-Nichols Hut. A common practice today is to add a Maori name as well so the new Manson-Nichols Hut is actually Kohanga Atawai/Manson-Nichols Hut. Something I do is to add the year it was built to the description i.e. (2020) or (1957)....

The new Kohanga Atawai/Manson-Nichols Hut (2020)....

The most widely used process is to refer to a hut using Roman numerals after the name. Thus we have Mueller Hut but also Mueller I, Mueller II...right up to the current Mueller V Hut. There are a lot of huts like this scattered right across the country and using the Roman numeral just makes it easier to talk about an individual hut so that everyone knows which one you are talking about. 

Mueller Hut (V)...the fifth hut in this general location

The newest rebuild and newest DOC Hut...Mintaro III (March 2021)...

Of course they don't teach Roman numerals in schools anymore so eventually we are going to need a new method.....when all us olde folk is gone what's understand it...