Hutbagger!
I’m not competitive or obsessive.
Much.
I started recording my hut visits at hutbagger.co.nz during the first Covid lockdown, because, well, what else was there to do on those Autumn evenings? I knew I’d been to a few over the years, but it was a surprise what they ended up totalling.
Some regions were well covered: Nelson, where I live, Canterbury, Southland, and the West Coast to some extent.
Other areas have been avoided, like Otago, and not a solitary hut in the North Island.
Rather than revisiting familiar territory, I thought I should fill in some blanks on the map.
Maybe I could get around all the remaining huts in the Nelson region. That led to an expedition to Roaring Lion and Flanagan‘s Huts. Another to Branch Creek Hut earlier in 2025.
That left Wheel Creek Hut as the last on that list. Eventually, in May 2025, that was visited.
No more possibilities.
Then, by the beginning of 2024 I realised it would be easy enough to visit all the huts in Kahurangi National Park. Apparently, there are 67 of them, and that meant just Kakapo, Johnson, and Greys Hut were left.
The track had been recently recut to Kakapo Hut, which made it doable. Great tramp, by the way, and the same goes for Johnson Hut.
Now, there’s only Greys Hut, and I will have visited the lot within Kahurangi National Park.
The thing with hutbagging is that it is easy to get to the first bunch, but as those easy-to-get-to huts are picked off, much more effort is required for the last few. There’s generally a reason why some haven’t previously been crossed off.
Roll on summer.