Mini Huts

by Kemi Niko

Made with the spirit and integrity of the backcountry; from salvaged materials to handcrafted construction.

Each month we’ll handcraft a batch of one specific hut, showcasing the process and delving into the history of the real hut.

Hooker Hut

Hooker Valley, Aoraki Mount Cook


Hooker hut, like those who stay in her, is a danger seeker. Built high above Hooker Glacier in 1910 it has been moved 5 times, hit by an avalanche, taken apart and stored before being moved to its current safer site. 

This design was a Mini Hut request and we were drawn in by it’s bold colour scheme. The centenarian hut stubbornly refused to be tamed after being rebuilt. It wore out the new roof paint job within a year to show its true age and we have sought to emulate that by offering a speckled roof treatment.

Plain orange roof is also available. 

Watch  some of the making process for Hooker Hut  


Reclaimed timber, salvaged steel coloured with Future Green with Shock Orange  

Optional treatment of speckled (middle image) or plain (top).


Limited numbers available. Please state your roof preference (speckled or plain) in the checkout notes section


































Hooker Hut image credits:

Current day - Thomas Chin

Historical - from Shelter From the Storm, Craig Potton Publishing 2012

Mini Hut Ingredients

_{Made in Aotearoa}

½ Large tin can, slab of reclaimed rimu or pine, hours of time and attention, years of experimentation, a healthy dose of hut obsession.

Every hut comes with a corrigated info card & map hidden in its chimney

$145

inc GST

Blue Range Hut

Tararua Forest Park, Wairarapa

A charming 4 bunk hut built in 1958 by the Masterton Tramping Club. The hut is adorned with quirky signage including ‘no parking’ and ‘antenatal clinic’ signs.


Blue hut with lean-to & chimney flue

Cone Hut

Tararua Forest Park, Wairarapa

Built in ’46 and rebuilt with the same materials in the early ‘80s by Aotearoa’s first tramping club, the Tararua Tramping Club. One of the best surviving examples of a totara ‘slab hut.’

Rimu hut with green roof and chimney

Goat Creek Hut

Old Ghost Road, Mōkihinui River, West Coast

This hut was built in 1957, and renovated in 2013. It has character in buckets, and you can sweep the floor straight out the door.

Grey hut with orange roof and chimney

Old Waihohonu Hut

Tongariro National Park, Tūrangi

An intriguing two room hut built in 1904 with pit sawn totara. The first hut built in Tongariro National Park and the oldest existing mountain hut in Aotearoa.



Monochrome red hut with chimney 

Mount Brown Hut

Lake Kaniere, West Coast

A feat of community efforts, it spent its first 50 years in Lower Arahura Valley before being flown up Mt Brown in sections and reconstructed entirely. This NZFS 4-bunk S81 design graces the cover of hut tome, “Shelter From The Storm.”



Orange hut with rimu deck

Dog Box Biv

Eyre Mountains, Southland

The smallest hut in the land, this historic biv was built around 1916 for horseback musterers whose names are still etched into the chimney and pencilled on the walls.



Silver and rust hut with chimney

Slaty Creek Hut

Waiheke River, West Coast

An historic early style of hunters hut built in the ‘50’s said to have been restored by Dave a few years back. Significant for its now rare beech slab construction.

Rimu hut with red roof and chimney

Slip Flat Hut

Greenstone and Caples Conservation Area

Just off Greenstone Trail you’ll find no signage to this character filled, three bunk hut. Flagstones on the floor, an open fireplace, low ceilings, and a deer head beside the entrance completed the decor.

Dark green wooden hut with light green chimney

Rocks Ahead Hut

Kaweka Forest Park, Hawkes Bay

A classic 4 bunk hut located on the true left bank of the Ngaruroro River, at the junction of three major tracks. A popular base for hunting, angling and kayaking missions.


Monochrome orange hut with chimney
   

Bealey Spur Hut

Arthurs Pass National Park, Canterbury

This basic six-bunk hut has local historic significance for its role in high country sheep farming. Built in 1935, it has an open fire with a tin chimney and spring mesh bunks attached to beech pole framing. It remained unpainted until 1997 when it got its first coat of green.


Green hut with chimney

Cecil Kings Hut

Kahurangi National Park, Nelson Tasman

A surviving hut of depression era gold mining. Cecil King, a well known local identity, claimed that he built it alone from a single Red Beech in 1935. Its a four-bunk hut, beech pole framed, clad in wooden slabs and roofed with shingles (later covered with iron).

Rimu hut with lean to & chimney on the side