How many Huts have you visited?

Nah. You gotta 'darken the threshold'. That's all. Read it somewhere once, famous name - Spearpoint or someone said it. In a book, maybe. Suits me anyhow - would be tedious staying put at 10am just because you've reached a new hut. I'm out there to enjoy myself, to see new country ... huts are just bait.

Frank has created a 'top of the topos' project where we climb the highest named peak on each map. It's an inducement to go to areas we normally wouldn't consider. Some of the summits are pathetic e.g. John 0'Groats and others are a bit more weighty. You guys talk about spreadsheets, but he is the database king. Everything is on a database and they're all connected - multi-relational databases - huts, trips, folks, nights out, list of top of topos to climb and how many days it takes, huts we haven't been to, huts we have and how many nights there etc. How many nights in this tent, when he bought that shirt and so on. How much we stayed in DoC huts and what the fees were, so how much value did we get out of the AHP. A series of trips we did in the 6 weeks around a selected date to see what we do at this time of year. To pack, he ticks on the database and prints it out. It has the weight of everything automatically tallied into a total, including carried and worn categories. Me...I don't even use a packing list. And I don't keep any records but then I don't really need to. He also writes up trip reports on his database. I think it's called Aspergers!

@Kreig to bag a hut the generally accepted criteria is you need to go inside but you do not have to sleep there. I would add that you need to get there or continue on from there by your own effort be it by walking, biking or kayaking. Some people bag huts they see from a distance but don't enter, others claim to have bagged huts by visiting the site of a removed hut and others claim to have bagged huts even though they fly to and from them. These claims don't pass muster in my opinion but there are no official guidelines!

"Have you REALLY bagged a hut if you haven't spent a night in it? ;)" I've had at least one night where I poked my nose into three different huts between 5pm and 5am. Does that count?

one of the many nice things about the outdoors - nobody writes your rules

Self-confessed hut bagger Brian Dobbie, a keen tramper for thirty-five years, is DOC’s national officer responsible for hut and track standards. He’s visited more than 600 backcountry huts and says that to ‘bag’ a hut, a tramper must ‘darken its door with [their] shadow’. The differences between huts interest him: " ‘I’m just intrigued by the decision to build a hut in a particular place, the way in which it is constructed, how it fits with the particular landscape … I love seeing huts with character, ones that have a little something extra." Brian Dobbie being quoted by Shaun Barnett in the introduction of "Shelter from the Storm" Barnett, Brown Spearpoint. Craig Potton Publishing 2012.

'to darken the threshold' haha I can see how some may interpret that as piss on the door :)

_knew_ I'd read it somewhere ...!

Then of course there is that other very specialised 'bagging' niche - aircraft crash sites. Pretty much a Tararua thing. (I'm told there is about a dozen of them. I've only done a couple.)

There are a couple in the Rimatukas near Orongaonga as well. I have a photo of most every hut Ive visited except that the picture I have of Cone is stolen from the net. We stopped on a terrible even by Tararua standards day to have lunch then continued on and half hour later realized I hadnt taken a picture. Oh well get it on the way back Conditions just as bad and forgot again