Toxic hutbagging
The beginning of twelve days off the beaten track in Fiordland National Park, New Zealand
Sitting on a bench outside the Milford Road Merchant I blew on the pie that I clutched in my hands. It was still too hot. I couldn’t help but ponder what was about to unfold. I was on the verge of the trip of a lifetime. Some months before I had been given a scholarship by the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand to undertake an expedition into the heart of Fiordland over January 2026. My fellow expedition members were Tess, Ellen and Regan — master masochists of the finest variety. Our plan was simple, we would strike out across Lake Te Anau, climbing through the Murchison Mountains till we were under the remote peak of Mt Irene. Traversing this we planned to then drop into the Large Burn to eventually end up at Caswell Sound. We’d then swing back up the Stillwater River till we could cross over the range to George Sound. Then it would just be a simple matter of following the George Sound Route back out to our ride back across Lake Te Anau. In doing so we would bag seven huts, loving some of them as part of FMC’s Love Our Huts campaign.
Our packs would be crammed full of the twelve days’ worth of rations that Ellen had made her mother help dehydrate while she was visiting from the states. On top of this we’d each have a packraft, crafted by Regan over the course of a month in his Newlands sweatshop (aka his garage). The packs themselves and much of the other gear had been supplied for demolition by Macpac, who I’d promised some photos if we survived our ordeal. And somehow all of these strands had come together, culminating in this pie before me. By the time I had pondered all of the above it was no longer thermo-nuclear, enabling me to take a bite and cover myself in pastry.