Is it time to ban alcohol at DOC huts?

"its not a common problem" depends where you go, at specific huts it is a common problem... again the building of more comfortable huts encourages more people to stay longer at huts and bring bigger booze supplies.

Dobsons. Smiths Creek. New problem? Comfortable huts? Or a rose tinted memory?

Rose tinted memory I think those huts in the sixties and seventies where just as bad as today and to be honest sometimes worse. Time of my life an 8 hour day walking and climbing a good fire and a glass of wine. It doesn't get much better than that. (unless it includes Black pudding and Kapiti blue vein cheese of course).

@bigpaul I have to agree to a large extent; there always were huts close to the road end that got a hammering. But anything much past four hours walk in was protected by virtue of the bogans being too lazy to walk that far. But easy access via choppers and jetboats seem to be eroding that protection, and increasingly places we always treasured as remote and precious to us, are no longer so. It's something worth talking about I think.

How do the concession structures typically work for operators when they drop people off at huts? Dropping people in to do what used to be standard backcountry stuff is one thing, but if the primary point of marketing of the services is now to drop a new type of highly dominating client into well serviced public facilities for which they're not actually paying anything directly, and which were never intended for that type of client, isn't that justification for the concession conditions to be reviewed?

i think there were more fit boozer in the past than there are now, who would pack the booze into a hut and were less likely to make a racket.... now you're more likley to get people who dont know or care about hut ettiquette, like the novelty of going into a hut, but dont care much about peace and quiet of others who may be around, theres one mission, to have maximum fun for themselves and to hell with the rest of you. getting hammered is their way of having fun

Does anybody know why some helicopter operators are permitted to land in the Tararua remote experience zone? To me this doesn't make any sense.

I didn't realise they were, but there's some general stuff about the Remote Experience zone and also helicopter landing site in the Wellington Conservation Management Strategy. http://www.doc.govt.nz/Documents/about-doc/role/policies-and-plans/wellington-cms/wn-cons-management-strategy.pdf Most relevant seems to be from page 187: "The forest park CMPs permit landings for recreational purposes at eight designated sites in Tararua Forest Park, two sites in Aorangi Forest Park and throughout the Orongorongo Valley in Rimutaka Forest Park. In Tararua Forest Park this has concentrated recreational hunting around a few huts throughout the “Remote Experience” zone of the central range. The Department wishes to increase recreational hunting opportunities in the central Tararuas as an assistance to its other wild animal control methods. By creating a landing zone for helicopter operators holding a concession granted Animal Pest Control by the Department of Conservation, the Department will encourage hunters to spread their hunting effort over a wider part of the Tararua range and in areas of eastern Rimutaka Forest Park where access is restricted and difficult. This policy is not expected to greatly increase either recreational helicopter activity in the parks or the impacts of helicopter noise and disturbance."

Thanks for that Izogi. I hadn't thought of it as being a tactic for keeping the deer numbers down.

Last season I got invited on a weekend trip to the D'Urville hut, and yes it was a bit of a boozy lads horror show. I was just a guest so it was not my place to say anything, but there were a few trampers that walked in and promptly walked out, probably headed for the Sabine hut? I felt bad for them, I would not have been happy if I was in their shoes. I suspect it is a common problem at that hut with the easy boat access allowing people to ferry in copious amounts of grog. I think the ban would force people to be a little more discrete so that their behaviour doesn't affect anyone else.