tramping new zealand

I was on the lookout for a new hut to visit that I could cope with getting to with my gammy leg.

One that looked like a possibility was Pollock Creek Hut. I’d seen the turn off at Truro Saddle when getting up to Dickie Spur Hut a few winters ago.

There’s an alternative and easier route, as you can drive along Happy Valley Road to a car park from where you have an easy two-hour walk each way, so that was a plus.

Except.

A word of caution here. The “road” is a track and is very narrow. Once you are committed, there’s no easy turnaround for about 4 km. The fern fronds form a narrow path for much of that, brushing the dust off the side of your car and making for limited visibility.

I made it about halfway before I abandoned the idea of driving on and managed to turn the car around.

From there, you definitely require a four-wheel-drive due to washouts and boulders. I hoofed it for an hour and a half over the terrain to the carpark. It seemed to be okay for a guy carrying a walking pole.

Then, I dropped down onto a river flat with livestock in residence. There’s a farmhouse with presumably intermittent use, and a shearing shed, which I kept clear of, marching over the river flats and crossing the river on occasion.

It took another two hours to reach the hut.

Pollock Creek Hut receives limited use, although a work team had visited a few weeks prior to do some pruning of the clearing.

With the extra three hours of four-wheel-drive track walking, there wasn’t much time for dallying around the standard six-bunk SF 70 New Zealand Forest Service hut, of which I’ve seen 100 or more examples.

It was getting dark by the time I made it back to my car, and I had the surreal experience of driving through a narrow fern tunnel in the pitch dark.