Distance: 4.9 km (2.0 DOC hours) - Tramping track - Easy-moderate terrain
Altitude: 404m to 668m. Gain: 359m. Loss: 489m . Gradient: 10 deg (Moderate)
Skills: Alpine weather (2/7) Winter - Snow/ice underfoot (2/7)

Tramping track (4/9)
Cut, marked tramping track: natural, rough ground surface

Primary, mapped (1/5)
Formal route, on maps, principal access to hut or along range / catchment

Moderate (difficulty: 3/5)
Occasional moderate climbs

Easy-moderate (difficulty: 2/5)
Tussock / river-gravel / open bush / cut track

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

None (difficulty: 1/6)
No unbridged river crossings

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

A good tramping track connects ABC cave and Phillip J Cox Memorial Hut. Drop back down from the cave to the main benched track, and follow it upriver as it drops to the valley floor. After half a kilometer orange markers on warratahs mark a rougher tramping track as it climbs south up the valleyside to the ridgeline. The track zigzags with the exposed tussock ridgeline over a number of rounded peaks, before swinging ESE and descending over pt546 and into manuka scrub. In the manuka, the track drops south off the ridgeline (from the site of the former Yellow Hut), soon reaching the comfortable, warm new Phillip J Cox memorial Hut in beech forest on a saddle below.

Note: Described in the reverse direction to your journey

From Phillip J Cox Memorial Hut, follow the marked tramping track as it climbs through beech then manuka Swinging west along the ridgeline the manuka becomes scrubby and then disappears, leaving you on exposed tussock tops. A series of zigzags along the ridgeline take you over several small peaks before descending steeply down the spur east of ABC cave to the valley floor. Here the tramping track meets an old farm track, following it SW downriver before begining to climb the southern valleyside. The turnoff to ABC cave is signposted - the rock bivvy being 30m above the track in the obvious rock outcrop. The cave is 200m SW of the location shown on 2009 topomaps.