Liverpool Hut, Mt Aspiring National Park, January 2014

Over the 2013/14 summer break, I'd planned many tramping adventures over the two weeks I had in the South Island with a bunch of friends. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't playing ball and it pretty much rained every day of the break. So we had to cancel many of the trips we'd been looking forward to for so long.

After making our way down the South Island (and cancelling the Mt Tapuae-o-Uenuku climb in the Kaikoura ranges and the Copland Pass trip by Mt Cook because we couldn't get up or over flooded rivers), we arrived in Wanaka rather fed up with the weather and the destruction of our plans. 

One trip that we were able to do, was to Liverpool Hut in the West Matukituki Valley. The valley is a popular tramping area, being only an hour's drive from Wanaka, with plenty of options available for tramping adventures. 

The last few kilometres of the gravel road to the carpark are pretty rough, with a few fords to cross, but in dry weather these shouldn't pose any problem for an ordinary 2WD car, except to test the suspension (cars with low clearance not recommended!).

The original plan was to head to French Ridge Hut (1600m), which is at the top of a spur leading up to the Bonar Glacier and is a key starting point for the climb to Mt Aspiring. However, a washed out bridge and a raging Matukuituki River put that plan to bed. The next best alternative was to Liverpool Hut (1200m), which lies on the flanks of Mt Barff, opposite French Ridge. 

The day started out mostly overcast, but sunny enough to warrant sunglasses. But with dark clouds looming to the West, it was never going to last.

The track begins from the Raspberry Flat carpark and initially travels through scenic farmland/ river flats, next to the river. The walk is easy going, but with a lot of stream crossings. In dry periods, most of these can be crossed, by utilising boulders placed by previous trampers, without getting your feet wet. Given the recent rain, we didn't quite manage to do this.

After about 1 3/4hrs walking, we arrived at Cascade Hut. Built in 1932, this lovely four bunk hut, with two separate bunk rooms and fires, is owned by the NZ Alpine Club and is not available to non-members. It looks like it would be a nice, cosy place to spend a night, or to camp out the front.

Cascade Hut

While soaking up some sun before venturing further up the valley towards the clouds, my mate Ben managed to catch a baby rabbit with his bare hands. What a bushman! Here's me posing with the happy fella! We let him go after that.

A further 20 minutes up the track is the colossal Aspiring Hut. It's a gorgeous hut, also owned by the NZ Alpine Club, but managed by DOC and available for public use. It's almost more of a luxury lodge, with its North-facing bench seats and large windows offering views of Mt Aspiring and thick stone walls upgrading the hut far above the much more basic corrugated exteriors of New Zealand's backcountry huts. Despite its size and popularity, I would loved to have been able to spend a night here and sit by the window reading a book with the fire crackling nearby. As it sits near the junction to the Cascade saddle route, I hope to get back here shortly to attempt the trip over the saddle to the Dart valley, leading to Glenorchy.

Aspiring Hut

The track continues up the valley on the grassy river flats for a another hour and a half, briefly going through some beech forest as the valley begins to narrow. Steep mountains tower over us and, I'd imagine, provide a fantastic sight were it not for the cloud smothering them.

The next part of the trip is not so easy. The climb to Liverpool is straight up - an all-fours climb from 500m elevation to 1200m in the space of about an hour and half. It's very steep and hard-going. The drizzle had set in by this point, to add to the fun. From the picture below, you can get an idea of the steepness of the terrain leading up to the hut. 

It pays to take your time on this track. There are a number of steep, slippery and narrow rock patches to get up and in wet conditions they're quite treacherous. Sadly, an experienced member of the Otago University Tramping Club died from a fall while climbing up to Liverpool Hut a few years ago.

Liverpool Hut looking East

The climb is well worth it though. The ten-bunk Liverpool Hut occupies a spectacular location, in a small alpine basin, offering fantastic views of Mt Aspiring to the North and the Matukuituki Valley West (in the picture above). French Ridge Hut sits almost opposite the hut, across the valley and a bit higher up. 

Unfortunately, due to the low cloud and drizzle, we couldn't see much of the views. Occasionally the clouds would peak slightly and we were treated to a small part of the view and our imaginations could run for a bit, picturing what the view would be like on a clear day and

I don't want to post another person's picture of the view on here of the view on a clear day, as I'm not too sure about copyright stuff, but Google Liverpool Hut images!

Approaching the hut

Although Liverpool Hut sits just above the bushline and is surrounded by tussock, it feels like it is much higher up. 

It has a 'freezer' door, a massive thing, designed to keep the cold and snow out. To add to the alpine feel, we were kept company in the hut by an alpine guide and his client, an Australian surgeon, who after a failed attempt to climb Mt Aspiring, had tried their hand on Mt Barff, just behind the hut. They had to turn back due to blizzard conditions near the top though. 

Liverpool is a very new hut, built in 2009, and has all the modern features of a modern DOC hut - double glazing etc. Although it has no heating. It's a very tidy and well kept hut, thanks to a DOC ranger based at Aspiring Hut, who regularly visits all the huts in the valley and maintains them. We had a pleasant evening, reading National Geographic magazines, watching Kea potter around on the deck outside and eating far too much chocolate.

Visitor outside the hut

The next morning, it really poured down. The only way back out is to retrace your steps the same way in. After an hour, and because the track was pretty much a stream by this point anyway, we gave up trying to keep our feet dry and proceeded to walk through every puddle we could find. It was quite liberating actually, and made the walk much faster. All of the side streams were running very high but didn't pose any problems crossing them. 

 So, despite the weather obscuring the views and a miserable walk out, it was still a great trip, with a nice variety of terrain. 

Approx timings:

Raspberry Flat car park to Aspiring Hut: 2-2.5hrs
Aspiring Hut to Liverpool Hut: 3-4hrs - take off 30mins for the return trip