Boo Boo Hut
(Boo Boo Hut: Photo Andrew Buglass 2004)
Maintenance status
Boo Boo Hut has been designated as
minimal maintenance for the short-term. At some point
it and Pinnacle Biv
will be replaced with a single structure midway between the two current sites.
The track to Boo Boo from
the Kokatahi roadend is fully maintain, but quite overgrown currently.
DOC is planning to recut it in the summer of 2011/12.
Location
Kokatahi catchment:Map
BV19.
GPS Ref: E1452973/
N5245567.
Altitude 594m. Boo Boo Hut is located 750m
further along the Kokatahi valley track than where it is marked on the latest topo map,
high on the bush faces above the Whakarira Gorge. The montane forest clear-felled
around the Hut when it was built in the late 1950's has regrown, and the hutsite
is shady and damp.
The name Boo Boo apparently originates from an incident at a deer culler's
camp at the current hutsite
in the early 1950's. Provisions used to be dropped in by fixed-wing aircraft
and a bureaucratic blunder resulted in the entire supply of tinned cheddar
for all the camps in the Kokatahi, along with the whole district's allocation of 128 tins
of raspberry jam, being
dropped at the Boo Boo camp. A pile of rusty tins about 100 metres down
from the Hut in the Hut bears witness to this.
Access
The track up to Boo Boo
from the road end is getting overgrown in many places and won't be officially
re-cut until 2011/ 12.
The odd bit of informal marking and trimming has been done by volunteers
in recent years to try and keep it servicable.
The trail commences on the TR of the Kokatahi just befor the bridge on the
Toaroha valley access road. A farm trail is followed from here through the paddocks
to the River. There is a short stretch of boulderhopping, then more paddocks.
An overgrowing track takes you from the last bit of farmalnd up the TR
to the Whakarira Gorge. This section has been
cruise taped intermittently. Watch out for the
onga onga (bush nettle) on this bit.
At the Gorge a new bridge takes you over to the TL of the valley.
The view from the bridge is superb and is worth a visit in its own right.
The track continues upvalley for 15 minutes, then drops into
Adamsons Creek. Boulderhop upriver another 100m to where the track re-enters the
bush. From here it is a steady climb/ sidles all the way to the Hut.
Bits of it were cruise-taped, permolated, and trimmed in 2004 and 2005
by volunteers. There is a fair bit of onga onga on this section also.
Allow 4-5 hours from the road end to Boo Boo currently.
There is a small regenerating clearing 20 metres up the Pinnacle Biv turnoff (five
minutes downriver from the Hut) in which a small helicopter could still possibly land.
The track upvalley from Boo Boo to Crawford Junction has not been officially maintained
for a considerable time. A particularly troublesome section from Boo Boo to
the Twins swingbridge reopened by volunteers in 2005. From
the bridge it is possible to travel via the TL of the valley (mostly river travel) to
Crawford Junction. The head of the Kokatahi and the Crawford valley were
re-cut in Autumn 2004 by DOC and will be fully maintained as part of the Lathrop/ Zit Saddle circuit.
Type
Boo Boo is a standard 4-bunk NZFS design with an open fire built in the late 50's .
A woodshed and covered porch were added in the early 80's during Lands and Survey's brief tenure
of the valley. There is a toilet, and water is from a small creek
next to the Hut.
Condition
Boo Boo is a bit dark and dingy due to its bush setting, but reasonably weatherproof.
The floor is uneven despite some repiling
work and replacement of bearers over the years. The sheet of novalite in the roof
above the fireplace has become
brittle and cracked and leaks in heavy rain. DOC are aware of this and will replace it
at some point. There is also a leak in the centre of the porch roof where the studs meet.
The internal fireplace surrounds are rusting out and the chimney smokes unless the door
or window is left open. Some of the floorboards and floor joists underneath the chimney
area starting to get a bit soggy. DOC painted and sealed the Hut and cut some of the
encroaching scrub
around it in early 2004.
Routes
The old main valley track upstream from Boo Boo was recut and remarked by volunteers in 2005
as far as the Twins swingbridge. From the Hut climb-sidles, crosses some regenerating
slips, then drops in a series of steps towards the Pinnacle Creek.
There are some dry rocks at the high-point of the sidle about 40 minutes from Boo
Boo. The larger and more weatherproof ones
can be found 20m or so uphill from the one on the track. There is no immediate water
supply unfortunately.
Around an hour from Boo Boo the track drops directly down a steep gut 150 vertical metres
into Pinnacle Creek. Head up the Creek 150m or so and then climb out on the TR up a
regenerating slip, and over a narrow rib into Alice Creek. Cross this diagonally upstream
and go up an old regenerating slip onto the terrace between Alice and Meharry creeks. The
track heads uphill through the bush for 150m, then crosses Meharry Creek onto the terrace
and a clearing where Twins Hut used to be.
From here the track drops steeply down to the swingbridge. Allow 1.5 - 2 hours currently
from Boo Boo to the bridge.
A dry-weather shortcut that reduces travel time by around 20 minutes involves dropping
down Pinnacle Creek to the Kokatahi River and boulderhopping up the TL
to the swingbridge. Two small bluffs need to be negotiated at river level on this route.
The first, just upstream from Pinnacle Creek, is crumbly rock and may not appeal to
the less agile.
From Twins bridge it's River travel on the TR all the way up
to Crawford Junction. Several short scub-bashes are required on this section to get
around large boulders and and small bluffs. The Crawford River can be forded
directly opposite the Crawford Junction Hut when the river is at normal low levels.
Alternately, there is a swingbridge at the foot of Whitehorn Spur across the Crawford River
15 minutes up from the Hut. Both bridges on this route will be minimally maintained by DOC.
There is a cableway some distance up the Kokatahi from Crawford Junction for those
choosing to travel the TL of the
valley. Allow 2-3 hours for the TR route from Twins swingbridge to Crawford Junction.
With all the recently recut bits it should be possible to reach
Top Crawford
Hut in a day from Boo.
Top Kokatahi Hut would be a bit
more of a stretch.
There is a fairly popular three-day circuit that takes in Boo Boo Hut and
Pinnacle Biv,
traverses the Toaroha Range, and exits via the Toaroha valley.
The Pinnacle turnoff is
five minutes downvalley from Boo Boo Hut, about 750m further along the main valley track
than indicated on the topo map. The track up to the Biv
is getting quite overgrown in places. There are snow-poles
above the bushline leading to the Biv. The more overgrown bits
of this trail were cruise-taped in October 2004. Allow four hours to get up to
Pinnacle from Boo Boo.
Repairs needed
Further site clearance around the Hut would let in the light and warmth and lessen
the chance of serious windthrow damage.
The inner chimney surrounds need replacing and re-filling with cement. Some
floorboards may need replacing in the medium term, and the Hut could do with
repiling and levelling. The sheet of novalite in the roof needs replacing,
and the leak in the porch needs attention.
Provisions
on site
Axe, billy, grubber, 2x washbasins, small camp oven, small pot, frypan,
plastic bucket, hand broom and shovel, bucket full of small flat head nails, 2x shovels.