• Honora DoC have been in and finished re-marking the track which goes from Black Hill to Salmon Creek. It was neglected by them for 15 years so it's good to see it finally done. I guess with the current government, it will be a long stretch before the treasury grants DoC sufficient funding to do further work but rest assured, Frank and I will be maintaining our care of it along with 10 or so other tracks we have recut and marked.
  24 November 2009
• Honora An alternative route to Black Hill and Salmon Creek is via the View Hill road end and carpark. DoC have recently completed clearing windfalls on the Wharfedale track and recutting the track from there up to Black Hill hut. There was massive windfall from the heavy snow in the 2008 winter. Just prior to this, DoC re-marked the well permolatted track that Frank and I had worked on with their own more sparsely positioned orange triangles. Since then, several of them have been lost due to being nailed on dead trees that have come down. We have just been in in January, 2009 and cleared half of the windfalls on the track to Salmon Crk. We need to go and finish the job and renail in permolats in the missing sections.
  22 January 2009
• Vlada We've just had a similar experience as ecokey. At the turn off (former Townshend Huts), the track disappeared shortly after crossing the stream. There was a track following the stream through the valley, but there was no track going up the ridgeline. We tried to make it alongside the ridgeline and found remnants of an overgrown track - which disappeared shortly afterwards. We continued up for about three hours - progress through the alpine shrubs was really slow. When we saw how much of the ridgeline was still ahead of us (and given that a southerly change just delivered us a snowstorm), we turned back and descended following a little stream back to the Townshend Huts. An experience we would like to avoid in the future.
  26 October 2008
• ecokev I walked in from Lees Valley a few months back, hoping to make it to Black Hill hut, however when I got to the turn off, the track disappeared after about 5 mins walk. We did have a lot of snow a few months prior to that so perhaps that was the reason, or otherwise I was utterly lost. I ended up giving up and going to the Wharfedale shelter. Anybody else experienced this or was I a bit of my rocker?
  14 February 2007
• frank king Honora and I spent a lot of weekends in the winter of 2000 cutting and marking the track down to the biv. The original track put in by the NZ Forest Service had virtually gone. We thought DoC would take the biv out if no one used it. So we just went ahead and made sure people could get in there. It's great to see it being used again. And now DoC have said they will maintain the track we cut.
  6 November 2004
• red&black This is a really neat hut. Much kudos to the crews who have given their own time to cut the track to Salmon Creek. Its all about putting back in sometimes. Excellent overnighter ex ChCh but recommend a 4WD accross the farmland if going in from Lees Valley
  19 May 2003

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Added 29 March 2003 by uubeemuubeem. No revisions.