Day 63 – Red Hills Hut to Porter Hut

My boots are starting to look a little worse for wear, and the tread is especially wearing smooth.  This made today’s tramp a bit harder than I expected, since much of the track is poorly formed or slippery with moss.  One section of the trail was destroyed by a huge slide that left the earth underneath exposed and muddy, and I had several careless falls that made me thankful I wasn’t on more dangerous ground.

I had expected to make two huts’ worth of distance today, but the trail was tough enough that when I reached Porter’s Hut, I was more than grateful to stop.  It helped that Porter is what the Kiwis call a “cute wee hut,” a nicely built ten-by-ten box that I had to stoop to enter.  It’s in a scenic spot in one corner of a subalpine meadow, with views of mountains to the north and west.  The hut itself dates back to the NZ Forest Service days, but has received a couple of recent updates, like a small window next to the fireplace that can be opened so it draws better, and a “FIRE EXIT” sign above the single door.  The other neat feature here is the milk can rain gauge outside.  There is a booklet inside from the Nelson Catchment Board inviting hut users to read and reset the gauge, record the levels in a log book, and mail a postcard to the Board with the reading.

I read the hut book outside while the sun went down, visited occasionally by the neighborhood weka.  This is easily the oldest hut book I have ever seen, beating all the competition by at least fifteen years.  Its first entries date from 1986, shortly after DoC took over hut management from NZFS.  There are loads of entries imploring DoC to keep these lesser used backcountry huts, and not to remove fireplaces in the name of timber conservation.

The most interesting entry for me was from 2002, by one Geoff Chapple, the originator of Te Araroa.  He came through here scouting routes through the Richmond range, and in fact left a note in the hut book detailing the same unmarked shortcut over Porters Ridge that he described for me when I went to visit him in Auckland.  I resolved to take this shortcut tomorrow, as it shaves off quite a lot of distance and looks like nicer tramping anyhow.