Distance: 3.3 km (2.0 DOC hours) - Unmaintained track - Moderate-hard terrain
Altitude: 834m to 1345m. Gain: 33m. Loss: 535m . Gradient: 10 deg (Moderate-hard)
Skills: Alpine weather (2/7) - Occasional rivers (3/6) Winter - Snow/ice underfoot (2/7)

Unmaintained track (5/9)
Former track, overgrown - markers / ground trail still followable

Secondary, unmapped (4/5)
Route not on maps, an alternative recognised access to hut or along range / catchment

Moderate-hard (difficulty: 4/5)
Continuous moderate climbs

Moderate-hard (difficulty: 4/5)
Tall, walkable scrub / large rocks, occasional waterfalls or gorges in rivers

Alpine weather (difficulty: 2/7)
Tramp on open tops, exposed to alpine weather

Occasional rivers (difficulty: 3/6)
Occasional rivers - impassible after heavy rain

Snow/ice underfoot (difficulty: 2/7)
Snow/ice likely on track

No description

Note: Described in the reverse direction to your journey

Head up the spur opposite the hut, downriver of the forks. A good, well traveled route starts from the face just downriver of the forks, climbing steeply through open beech. Good going until 100m above the river the face tops out, and we’re on the ridgeline proper. Stunted beech and windfall. The eastern face open to become a large slip, open, but uncrossable. On the western side: close-packed stunted growth continues. The scrubby spur is the only option. Finally you break out onto an open but loose scree face which you climb to the ridgeline.

The tussock on the tops is mixed with woody scrub, waist high. I hug the eastern side of the plateau where beech trees lap onto the tops. Follow the ridgeline south to the southern tip of the clearing and pt1309.

The last section through the bush to the hut is not easy – thick, stunted beech, waist high broad-leafed grass beneath it. An old cullers' cut track, marked with tin-lids nailed to trees runs through this section, but is very overgrown. It drops west to the marshy creek 100m below the hut, and follows it boggilly upriver to the hut