Ohhh Mt Brown you beautiful little orange box full of rats!!!

If you’ve been tramping with me you’ll know I’m an absolute fiend for uphills and curse the entire way down. This track was a decent climb which made it an epic first day, but the second day was a relentless downhill which made me a bit cranky. 

We arrived at the carpark around 1pm, after a 3hr 40 min drive from Ōtautahi, Christchurch. On the way we took the opportunity to have a West Coast pie on the Hokitika beach front before checking out the Hokitika gorge walk. It’s a decent mish from Ōtautahi so well worth the early wakeup to check out some other spots on the way. The car park is super close to Lake Kaniere and Dorothy falls too, highly recommend checking them out. There were four other cars parked when we arrived, and the hut has four bunks so we expected a crowded party at the top. To our surprise, everyone we passed was heading up and down in the day so we ended up having the hut all to ourselves. The sign says 4 hours in both directions and online we read 3-4 hours. It took us 3 hours up with plenty of breaks and view stops, and 2.5 hours down. If you just had a day pack you could definitely head up and down fairly quickly. 

The track isn’t maintained by DOC, but all things considered was in pretty good nick thanks to the Permolat Trust. It starts off flat and wanders straight into gorgeous bush. There were a few fallen trees that my short legs couldn’t get over so I had to get all primal and crawled underneath on my hands and knees, felt very in touch with the whenua. It then crosses a wee little creek which was gorgeous. This is the only water body you have to cross which is gangsta and means you can do this track at any time of the year, a bit of a rare case for the wet and wooly west coast!! After this it’s a hectic climb up so I was in heaven. There was a cute and very friendly lil pīwakawaka that followed us most of the way up. Heaps of ferns at the beginning and cool shelf fungi and moss everywhere. Some of the roots on the trail seemed so perfect as hand holds to help you get up which made things easy. 

As you climb up you get a more extensive view of Lake Kaniere and the coastline as well as the surrounding bush covered foothills. There were tonnes of horopito bushes and trees about half way up and they were so pretty and pink. The second half of the track was super fricken boggy which was honestly pretty fun. The mud had a good clay composition so if you got the right footing you could avoid being knee deep in mud. Just before you’re above the tree line there are tonnes of mountain neinei that look like truffula trees from the lorax, which are so funky. By the time we got to the alpine zone it started to really cloud over so visibility was pretty poor. It evens out a lot at the top and that’s when you know the hut is very close. Unfortunately there wasn’t much of a view at the hut because of the cloud but we got to see glimpses of the view on our way up.

The hut was very cute, 4 bunks, a little table with two stools for about 4 people, a bit of room on the floor to pop sleeping mats if there were more of you wanting to stay. A nice fireplace called ‘little cracker’ which made me laugh. There isn’t any supply of firewood for about 30 minutes so if you want to have the fire going I suggest collecting some wood before you ascend the alpine section or lugging some up in your pack. There was water outside the hut but the tap gets frozen in some parts of the year so make sure you boil some water before bed so you’ve got some to wake up to in the morning. The hut has a gorgeous deck so we had a few west coast hazys while we watched the west coast hazzzee. We were told rats hangout in the hut lining and well when we shut our eyes and all was quiet the rats decided it was party time. They had a bloody heck of a time dancing about, couldn’t see them and they weren’t in the hut but knowing they were in the ceiling was kinda feral. 

The hut’s pretty exposed and can get real windy so make sure you check for high winds before you trek and maybe avoid it during those times. The hut is bookable so give poor ol DOC some money and book ahead of time to avoid getting caught out without a place to sleep. There’s def room to tent but it gets pretty frosty and cold so I'd only really do this in summer. 

Any questions, hit me up. Love roro xxx