Child friendly rating: 3 stars

Distance: 2-7.5km

Signposted time: 1-2 hours

Bookings Required? No

Suitable in Winter? Yes

Camping Available? Not really

4wd required? Yes

Parking:

You need to head down Happy Valley Road for as long as you can.

This road is definitely capable 4WD only. An AWD will definitely not make it. The road is unmarked off SH6 - probably to stop those who are just out for a joy ride.

There are several creek crossings, and the road is generally only cut wide enough for a quad bike rather than a 4WD. Do not take a car you are precious about, as you will basically be squeezing your car through gorse and it will get scratched up.

If you head down to the river at the first access point, it's around 6km walk from here. This is the general location to start walking, however the farmer does leave his gate unlocked and has for years. This means that if you're confident and capable, you can actually drive to within 2km of the hut.

I ended up not wanting to risk one of the car river crossings on the farmers road, and parked the car here walking the rest of the way along the road, and then along the riverbed once the 4WD road finished.

We did see another person who was setting trap lines who drove their Hilux right to the end of the farmers road. That person was both surprised to see me alone with 3 little kids (Carrying 2 of them and my pack on my back) and also surprised I managed to drive as far as I did.

The Track:

There is no track as such. You follow the riverbed.

If you head down to the riverbed at the first point, it's about 7.5km to walk along the riverbed. Or you can follow the farmers private road. We bumped into the farmer too, and he didn't mind us using the road to access the hut.

We drove to the point where we needed to walk 4.5km to the hut. While we could have gone straight to follow the river, it was easier to follow the 4WD road as far as it went.

You then get to the point where the 4WD road ends at the riverbed. From here it is about 2km to the hut. There isn't really anything in the way of track markers. You simply follow the track upstream.

When you get to the junction of Polluck Creek and the Kakapotahi River, take the right branch (True left - left when facing downstream) - the Kakapotahi.

You will need to cross the river once after the river splits. It is a relatively deep crossing where I did feel very cautious, but still safe with linked arms with my 7yo, and having my 3yo on my shoulders and 4 month old on my front.

Follow this on the true right side until you're almost in line with the hut. You really need a GPS, or to use the GPS capabilities on your phone to find the hut.

Once you're almost in line with the hut, start looking for the access point. There is a large orange marker that is quite faded, and slightly overgrown (In one of the picts). If you're lucky there will also be a cairn in the dry riverbed near the access point marking the marker.

If you follow the correct track, it is easy to follow, thin, muddy, and only around 200 metres.

We couldn't find the correct track, so we bush bashed our way in, the coordinates from the hutbagger website are a little off, and so we bashed around in circles looking for the hut for ages. I was shattered doing this while carrying two kids and a pack. Everything was easy on the way out when we found the correct track.

It took us 2.25 hours to get to the hut from where I parked. 45 minutes to get to the riverbed, and then 1 hour 30 after the riverbed. On the way back it only took 2 hours total as we weren't bush bashing around in circles.

Hut:

The hut is not in much of a clearing - there's only a tiny small patch of grass in front of the hut which makes it quite hard to find the hut if you don't have the correct track.

It is a standard NZFS S70 6-bunk design.

Recommendations:

If you can 4WD this road, then the access to the hut is very short, especially if you can get all the way to the end of the 4WD road. If you find the correct track to get to the hut it is easy access here too. And if the river flows are low then the crossing isn't too terrible, but does require skill.

That is a lot of if's, so while a well maintained well marked track with no river crossing would have a family-friendly rating of 5, this one gets a 3 as the adults need to be very capable in all of 4WD driving, route-finding, and river crossing. If the adults are capable in this, this is an extremely easy to get to hut.