Love our Huts and Tracks

There’s a special feeling that comes when you round the corner on a track and see, at the edge of a clearing, a hut’s simple roof line and, with it, the prospect of a fire and a warm night.

We love our huts. They are places packed with stories, glimpses of which can be found in the hut book, the dripped wax and the worn surfaces that speak of the many nights people have spent protected from the elements.

Each of our public huts is a portal to the great outdoors, a place from which we step out into the taiao/ nature and a multitude of backcountry experiences. But we do our public huts and tracks a disservice if we only focus on their individual charms. Our network of public huts and tracks is so much more. It is the backbone of how, over many years, we have been able to care for nature and keep ourselves and each other safe in the backcountry.

FMC believes this needs to be protected and celebrated. Together, we can achieve this through the Love our Huts and Tracks campaign.

How can we do this?

Love our Huts and Tracks campaign is a month-long celebration of huts, tracks and bridges all around the country. With your help, we’re aiming to have over 900 public huts visited this November to give them a spring clean and health check, including the bridges and tracks along the way.

We hope trampers, hunters, climbers, clubs and our wider outdoors community will join us in planning their trips, so the whole network is covered.

The hut health-check reports will form the basis of a draft strategy reporting on the current state of our public network of huts, tracks and bridges, and the options on how we can together protect and strengthen this network. A workshop mid next year will bring together those involved in maintaining, protecting and managing the backcountry network to consider these options and chart a path forward.

Junction hut. Photo: Thiago Amaral

Become part of the campaign

We need your help! Is there a hut you always wanted to visit, but never got to? One you haven’t visited for a long time, but it holds a special place in your heart? One that’s part of a long traverse you’ve been planning to do for years?

We would love as many people as possible to get involved in showing some love to our public huts this November! It is a great opportunity to combine your spring trips with a great cause.

What’s involved

Select the hut(s) you want to visit and give a spring clean to. We’ll give you a simple checklist of things to do, and some tips and ideas on how to make the hut tidy and welcoming.

We’ll also provide a phone-based form to record the health check that you can easily sync with our hut database once you are back in wifi range. The health check will also involve recording recent entries in the hut book so we can find out in more detail the many ways our huts are being used to make a difference in conservation, being in the outdoors, and saving lives.

To sign up, please register below.

Nelson tramping club at Beeby’s hut, Mt Richmond Forest Park

Register your trip

So you’ve decided you’d like to be part of this campaign – we’re stoked to hear that!

All you need to do is register your trip by following the link below. Use the form to select your hut, and also tell us details of when in November you might go, the number of people you are going with, and the planned route. It’s fine if dates, party size and routes change. If you are experiencing issues with the registration form, please try using Chrome browser.

Once signed up we’ll send you further details, as well as post some material (including some stickers etc) before you head away.

Thanks so much for being involved!

FAQs

I have a trip coming up in October and/or December. Can I still register?

As long as part of your trip takes place in November then it’s still fine to register. Note that we’ll be posting the material to all people who have registered to take it with them on a trip in the first half of October.

I decided which hut I want to visit, but it’s not showing up on the registration list.

If the hut you want to visit is not on the list, it means it has already been taken by someone else. To avoid disappointment, we suggest having a plan B in mind before starting the registration process.

Get in touch

For more information, please contact:

General information – loveourhuts@fmc.org.nz

Campaign and media inquiries – mick.abbott@fmc.org.nz

Clubs contacts – North Island: emma.gregg@fmc.org.nz, South Island: raymond.ford@fmc.org.nz

Keep in touch

You can follow the progress of the campaign on our  Love our Huts FB group or Instagram, where you can show off your love for the huts and share it with others. Keep an eye out for a special edition of the Newsletter. We’ll keep you posted, so together we can be sure we’re on track!

Handy downloads and links to read and share:

Mid King bivvy. Photo: Neville Palmer