The library
Volume XVII

Alpine Craft

A recording: episode 7 of Listen, the library read aloud

The helicopter, the glass, the air, the weather and the ground, and knowing when the honest answer is no.

  •  
  • 7 chapters
  • The Southern Alps
An engraving of a hunter with a rifle over his shoulder climbing a ridge of snow, scree and tussock, with jagged peaks and cloud beyond
Contents
  1. IThe machineHelicopters
  2. IISit down and lookGlassing
  3. IIIWhich way the air goesThermals
  4. IVWeather off the TasmanThe West Coast
  5. VGround that bitesTerrain and rivers
  6. VIThe shot you leaveThe call
  7. VIILegs, beacon, packLooking after yourself
I
Helicopters

The machine

The trip starts and ends with a helicopter, and for most people it is the first time they have stood near one with the blades turning. It is the most dangerous machine you will go near all week, and most of that danger comes from noise and wind pushing you into doing something without thinking.

The rule that covers almost everything: nobody moves towards a running helicopter until the pilot, or the person loading it, waves them in. Not when the skids touch, not when the door opens. You wait, crouched, where the pilot can see you, and you go when you get the nod.

Every pilot briefs a version of the same rules, and the US Federal Aviation Administration's helicopter handbook sets them out in much the same words. On the day, the pilot's brief is the one that counts.

A small helicopter on a tussock flat below steep peaks, with hunters unloading gear beside it
Plate IThe drop-off. Gear in one pile, people out of the way, and nobody near the back of the machine.
Where you can walk

Think of the helicopter as a clock seen from above, nose at twelve. From roughly ten o'clock round to two you are in the pilot's view, and that is the way in and the way out. On some machines the blades dip lowest at the front, which is why many pilots bring people in at an angle from a front corner rather than dead ahead. Go where you're waved.

Further round the sides you are drifting out of view. Behind the doors you are invisible, and back there is the tail rotor.

On a slope it changes. The ground on the uphill side rises towards the main blades, so you come in and go out on the downhill side, never the uphill one. Tap the drawing to choose where you'd walk in from, then switch the ground to a slope and try again.

Tail rotor

Tap where you would walk in from

Anywhere on the drawing. The verdict comes up here.

Fig. 1A small helicopter from above, nose at twelve o'clock. Every machine has its own brief, and the pilot's is the one that counts.
On and off, step by step
  1. Before it lands

    One pile, held down

    Packs, cased rifles and bags in a single pile where the loader shows you, with the heaviest on top. Hats in pockets, ear plugs in. Anything light and loose, from a bin liner to a sleeping mat, gets sat on or strapped down, because the downwash will throw it into the blades or into the next valley.

  2. It lands

    Crouch and wait

    Stay crouched beside the pile, back to the machine, a hand on the gear. If grit blinds you, stop, get lower or sit down, and wait. Never walk towards it while the blades are starting up or slowing down: at low speed they droop and flap.

  3. The signal

    In from the front, low

    When the pilot or loader waves you in, walk, don't run, crouched, from the front where the pilot can see you. Anything long, rifle cases and poles included, is carried flat and below the waist, never upright and never on your shoulder. If your hat blows off, let it go. Nobody reaches up or chases anything near a helicopter.

  4. In the seat

    Belt on, latches clear

    Seat belt done up first. Nothing loose on your lap. Keep clothing and gear away from the door latches: New Zealand's Civil Aviation Authority warns that a door can look shut without being latched, and pop open in flight. Do exactly what the pilot says about doors and headsets.

  5. Getting out

    Out, crouch, stay put

    Out the way you came in, towards the front, low. Back to the pile, crouch, hold it down, and stay there until the machine has gone and the noise has dropped. Then stand up and have a look at where you are.

Rifles near the machine

Unloaded, always, in or anywhere near a helicopter. Cased, usually with the bolt out, and carried low like everything else long. Where the rifles ride is the pilot's and the guide's call, and that is the end of the discussion.

Never push the pilot

Helicopters don't fly into cloud, so either end of the trip can slide a day. In November 2015 a scenic flight crashed on the Fox Glacier in deteriorating weather and seven people died. New Zealand's Transport Accident Investigation Commission found the weather was unstable and unsuitable, and that the pilot's ability to judge height had probably been degraded. A weather hold costs a day. Nobody talks a pilot into a gap in the cloud.

Lore

Helicopters changed New Zealand hunting. From the 1960s they lifted deer carcasses out of the mountains for the venison trade, and from 1965 hunters were shooting from them, several hundred deer in a day. When deer farming was legalised in 1969 the same machines went after live deer, and men jumped from the skids onto running deer and wrestled them down, rodeo style. Te Ara, the encyclopedia of New Zealand, notes that the jumpers often lost teeth.

II
Glassing

Sit down and look

Hunting the tops is mostly sitting still and looking. You climb to a spot that sees across and down into the country, you sit, and you work the binoculars over it slowly. Most animals are found from a seat, not on the move. Walking around hoping to bump into one is how you see the back end of everything leaving.

The word for it is glassing, and it is a skill. Two people can sit on the same rock for an hour and one of them will find three animals the other never saw.

i

Brace it

Elbows on knees, binoculars on the pack, or on a tripod. Shaky glass hides animals. Braced, the same binoculars show you far more.

ii

Work in strips

Near to far, left to right, each view overlapping the last, holding each one for a few seconds. Then do the whole face again. Animals stand up, move, and appear where there was nothing ten minutes ago.

iii

Look for pieces

A horizontal line in vertical country, a flick of an ear, legs under a bush, something the wrong colour. You rarely see a whole animal standing broadside.

iv

Binoculars first, then the spotter

Binoculars to find, the spotter to decide. The scope tells you bull or nanny, young or old, and whether he is worth the climb.

An engraving of a hunter sitting on a rock high above a valley, glassing through binoculars, with a spotting scope on a tripod beside him and his pack and cased rifle at his side
Plate IIA seat with a view: braced, binoculars up, the spotter ready for when something turns up.
Glass this face

Here is a face the way it looks from across the valley. There are animals on it, and a rock that will try to fool you. Tap a square to put the binoculars on it, and work it the way you would on the hill: strip by strip, not by jumping to the obvious bits.

Found 0 of 4Squares glassed 0 of 12
Fig. 2A face from across the valley, engraved, with the binocular squares drawn on.

Pick a square

Start at one corner and work across in strips, the way you would on the hill. The face doesn't mind where you start.

Where they are, and when

The Department of Conservation's description of tahr is a timetable worth learning. They rest through the middle of the day among the rock outcrops above the bushline, feed from mid to late afternoon into the evening, then climb back up. On the West Coast, where the cover is thick, they often lie up below the bushline, come out onto the tussock and slips in the evening, and go back into cover early in the morning. So the evening is prime time, and first light catches them heading home.

October is spring up there. Tahr come lower and look paler than in winter, nanny groups tend to hold the high ground, and bulls range wider and lower. Chamois sit on lookouts and watch downhill more than up, which is why DOC's advice is to come at a chamois from above.

Look, then look again

DOC's advice is to glass from a good vantage point and then look again later, because animals that were lying down or out of sight will have moved. The Deerstalkers' advice is to spend the first day glassing before you climb anything. A bedded animal is the hardest thing to see and the easiest thing to stalk.

Two habits

Glass from the shade if you can: sitting in the sun puts glare across the lenses and puts you on show. And never glass with the rifle scope. Anyone you look at through it has a rifle pointed at them.

III
Thermals

Which way the air goes

An animal that smells you is gone, and DOC's advice for tahr is to move into the wind using cover, because they smell, hear and see well. On flat country the wind is the wind. In the mountains there is a second, smaller wind underneath it that changes direction on a timetable, and it is called a thermal.

The ground heats and cools faster than the air around it. At night the slopes cool, chill the air touching them, and that cold, heavy air drains downhill like water, pooling on the valley floor. Once the sun gets onto a face it warms the ground, and the air starts to climb. Meteorologists call the downhill flow katabatic and the uphill flow anabatic. The American Meteorological Society puts a fair-weather upslope breeze at typically 3 to 5 metres a second and the night drainage at 3 to 4, faster on long slopes. That is barely a breeze, and plenty to carry your scent a long way.

cold air pools Valley air: down the valley Valley air: turning round Valley air: up the valley
Fig. 3One clear October day in a steep valley. Red arrows climb, blue arrows drain. The ringed animal is the one that smells you.

The big wind beats the little wind. Thermals are the rule on calm, clear days. When a real wind is blowing, a nor'wester over the tops for example, it overrides them on the ridges and swirls round in the gullies, and cloudy days barely make thermals at all.

Ice makes its own wind. Air chilled against glaciers and big snowfields keeps draining downhill even on a sunny day, so near the ice, and in shaded faces, the air can still be sliding down when the textbook says it should be climbing.

So you check the air constantly. A puff of fine powder from a squeeze bottle, a strand of wool tied to the rifle, a pinch of dry grass dropped from shoulder height: watch where it goes, every time you stop, and again before you commit to the last part of a stalk.

IV
The West Coast

Weather off the Tasman

The West Coast sits straight in the path of the westerlies, with nothing between it and Australia but the Tasman Sea. Moist air comes off the sea, hits the Southern Alps, is forced up, cools, and drops its water on the western side. DOC warns that the park can get heavy rain at any time of year, and up to five metres of it in a year.

October is about as wet as it gets. NIWA's long-term averages for Hokitika, up the coast, make it the wettest month of the year there, with 285 millimetres and the most rain days of any month. Up at 1,500 metres on that coast, across the last ten Octobers, the average day got to 5.7°, the average night went to minus 0.8°, more than half of all nights sat below freezing, and it rained on 55% of days. Plan for that, and anything better is a gift.

55%October days with rain, at 1,500 m
−0.8°CAverage October night up there
285mmOctober rain at Hokitika, its wettest month
5mRain a year, at most, in the park
How a front comes through
Fox Glacier Tasman Main Divide Freezing level 2,600 m Freezing level 2,200 m Freezing level 900 m Freezing level 1,500 m Nor'west, rising Gale on the tops Southwest, cold frost
Fig. 4A typical front, drawn from the sea to the Main Divide. The numbers are an illustration, not a forecast.
The number that matters: freezing level

The freezing level is the height where the air drops to zero. Above it, rain is snow, wet rock is ice, and a slope you walked up yesterday may be frozen hard this morning. NIWA's rule of thumb is that air cools by about 0.7° for every 100 metres you climb, so the tops at 1,500 metres run nine or ten degrees colder than the coast. The township forecast tells you very little about where you will be.

A hunter with a suppressed rifle on a snowy ridge, the valley falling away behind him
Plate IIIAbove the freezing level the ridge is snow, and the wind is whatever the forecast said at 2,000 metres.
1,000 m 2,000 m3,000 m Coast, 163 m Tops, 1,500 m Freezing level
2,000 mFreezing level
+4°About, at 1,500 m
+13°About, at the coast
Fig. 5Shaded ground is above the freezing level. Temperatures use NIWA's 0.7° per 100 m, so treat them as a guide.
Reading a mountain forecast

The town forecast is the wrong forecast. MetService writes separate forecasts for the national parks, built for people going high: winds at 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 metres, the freezing level, the hazards and the wind chill. There isn't one for Westland Tai Poutini itself, so the guide reads the Aoraki/Mount Cook park forecast next door, the Westland forecast and the avalanche advisory every morning.

Tap each line of the example to see what it is telling you. The decision isn't yours to make up there, but you should understand it. Bad conditions mean a day of glassing from somewhere safe, or a day in the hut, and that is a normal day, not a wasted one.

An example park forecast
Made up for this book, laid out like the real thing

Today: Fine at first. Cloud thickening from the west in the afternoon, with rain developing on the tops in the evening. Northwest winds rising to gale on the tops.

Freezing level2,400 m falling to 1,600 m
Wind at 1,000 mNW 30 km/h
Wind at 2,000 mNW 80 km/h, gusts 120
Wind at 3,000 mNW 110 km/h

Hazards: Heavy rain from evening. Severe gales on exposed ridges. Wind chill below minus 10° on the tops.

Tomorrow: Rain, heavy at times. Snow to 1,200 m late. Southwest change.

V
Terrain and rivers

Ground that bites

The thing most likely to hurt you up there is not the rifle and not the weather on its own. It is the ground. The New Zealand Mountain Safety Council looked at sixteen years of alpine hunting deaths and found that ten of the eleven hunters who died fell. Coroners' reports on experienced hunters killed on bluffs and waterfalls keep coming back to the same two things: complacency, and being set on a goal.

The Council's advice reads like a description of this trip. Go down only routes you know, allow for the weight of the meat on the way down, expect snow to ice up in the evening, stay back from crumbling bluff edges, and hunt with a mate. There is no track where we are going. Every line you take is one somebody chose.

Hunting deaths in New Zealand, 2007 to 2016
Falls11
Mistaken for game9
Shot themselves8
Drowning7
Shot by another5
Avalanche1

Fig. 641 deaths in ten years, from the Mountain Safety Council's hunting study.

What each kind of ground does
An engraved mountainside: a cornice on the ridge, a snow-filled gully, a tussock slope above a band of bluffs, a scree slope, a boulder field, a creek under a snow bridge, and a braided river below
Fig. 7One face, eight ways to get hurt. Tap a number.
  1. 1
    Wet snowgrassLong, slick tussock, and the most underrated danger up there. Wet or frosted, walking on it is like walking on oiled hair, and a slip on a steep face does not stop.
  2. 2
    BluffsCliff bands, often hidden below a slope that rolls over out of sight. Never go down anything you couldn't climb back up. If you get bluffed, stop and call for help rather than gamble.
  3. 3
    Running screeSmall, even stones that slide together. Going down, you can plunge-step heels first and ride it. Going up, it is two steps up and one back.
  4. 4
    Loose rockBigger blocks that roll. Never stand below someone on it, move close together or one at a time, and shout "rock" the moment anything moves.
  5. 5
    Frozen snow and chutesHard and slick early in the day. One slip and you are sliding down a gully with nothing to stop you before the bluff. Later the sun softens it and starts slides of wet snow.
  6. 6
    CornicesOverhanging lips of snow on the downwind side of a ridge. From above they look like ground. Stay well back from any edge you can't see under.
  7. 7
    Snow bridgesSnow lying over a creek looks solid and often is not, especially in spring and late in the day. Cross on the rocks if there is any choice.
  8. 8
    RiversWest Coast rivers come up fast, from rain you can't see. The Mountain Safety Council ranks river crossings as the second biggest killer of trampers.
Rivers

Between 2007 and 2021, 21 people died crossing rivers in New Zealand's outdoors, six of them hunters. Spring rain and snowmelt raise West Coast rivers fast, from rain falling in headwaters you may never see, and a stream that was a hop on the way in can be a wall of brown water on the way out.

The rule the Mountain Safety Council teaches is short: if in doubt, stay out. You wait it out on the bank, overnight if that is what it takes. Nobody crosses a flooded river on this trip. Nobody.

Don't cross if

The current is faster than walking pace, at any depth. The water is murky, surging, or carrying debris. You can hear boulders rolling along the bottom. Or it would come above the thighs of the shortest person in the group.

And ask what is pushing the decision. A pickup time, a weather window or being tired are reasons people drown, not reasons to cross.

An engraving of three hunters with packs wading a shallow braided river shoulder to shoulder, each holding the next one's pack hip belt
Plate IVMutual support: shoulder to shoulder, hands on each other's hip belts, the strongest at the upstream end, moving as one through slow, shallow water.

  1. Read it first

    From above if you can. Look for the widest, shallowest, slowest section, ideally braided, with a safe exit and no rapids, logs or gorge just below.

  2. Set up

    Boots stay on. Baggy rain gear goes in the pack. Chest strap undone, hip belt done up, the pack liner sealed so the pack floats. The beacon is clipped to your body, not the pack.

  3. Link up

    Side by side, each person gripping the next one's hip belt. Strongest at the upstream end, another strong one downstream. Practise the signals and the turn on dry land first.

  4. Move as one

    Short shuffling steps, feet felt down before weight goes on. If it gets deeper or faster than you read it, come back together.

  5. If you are swept away

    Lie back on the pack, feet downstream, and steer with your arms for the bank or an eddy. If the pack snags, unclip it.

Snow and avalanche in October

October is spring up there, and snow can fall in any month. The NZ Avalanche Advisory, run by the Mountain Safety Council, forecasts thirteen backcountry regions on a five-level danger scale, rated separately for height bands, normally above 1,800 metres, 1,200 to 1,800, and below 1,200. Since 2026 every forecast also says how confident the forecasters are. The guide checks the nearest region, Aoraki/Mount Cook, every morning.

Spring has its own pattern. Sun on new snow sets off slides of wet snow at fairly predictable times of day, rock lets go from warming faces in the afternoon and comes down the gullies you climbed in the morning, and frozen morning snow is harder than it looks. New Zealand's avalanche incidents peak in September, and most recreational ones happen when the rating is only Moderate. The Council's kit list for alpine hunting in winter and spring runs to helmet, crampons, ice axe, transceiver, probe and shovel. Some days the answer is a different face, or no face at all.

The danger scale
  1. 1
    LowGenerally safe. Watch isolated features.
  2. 2
    ModerateDanger on specific features. Look at the snow and the terrain.
  3. 3
    ConsiderableDangerous. Careful route-finding and conservative decisions.
  4. 4
    HighVery dangerous. Stay out of avalanche terrain.
  5. 5
    ExtremeAvoid all avalanche terrain.
A rifle resting upright in fresh snow among the tussock on the tops, with snowy peaks behind
Plate VOctober on the tops. Snow can fall in any month up there.
VI
The call

The shot you leave

Up here the shot is often possible when the retrieval is not. A bull on a ledge across a gut is a shot you can make, and an animal you may never reach. So before anyone settles behind the rifle, two questions get asked out loud: where will it fall, and can we get to it and back safely before dark?

An animal shot on a steep face rarely drops where it stood. It slides, rolls and tumbles until something stops it: a bench, a scree fan, the bottom of a bluff, or a creek bed in a gorge. Where it stops is where you have to go. If the honest answer is "nowhere safe", the rifle stays quiet.

A tahr down on the shale, with the valley and snowy peaks behind
Plate VIA good outcome: down on the shale, where it can be reached.
Where will it fall?
bench bluff scree gut gorge You
Fig. 8A face in profile. Pick where he is standing, take the shot, and watch where he ends up.
3:00pm
1.5 hrsTo reach him
1 hrTo cape and pack
7:30pmBack at the hut
8:05pmSunset, mid October

Pick a spot and take the shot

Then move the clock and see how the answer changes.

Shooting up or down a slope

Steep country throws one more trap. Gravity only pulls the bullet down over the horizontal distance to the animal, not the distance along your line of sight. Shoot up or down a steep face with the rangefinder's straight-line distance dialled, and the bullet goes high, uphill or downhill alike.

The fix is to use the horizontal distance, which most hunting rangefinders show in an angle-compensated mode. As a worked example for a .270 zeroed at 200 metres, a 400 metre shot at 30 degrees with the level-ground dial goes about 16 centimetres high, enough to miss the heart and lungs altogether. At steep angles and long ranges, get closer.

Never from directly below

An animal shot straight above you comes down at you, and it brings rocks with it. In one account the Mountain Safety Council published, a bull shot about 200 metres upslope rolled and set off rockfall onto the hunters.

Five questions before the trigger

  1. Is it the right animal, beyond doubt?

    Seen whole, through the spotter, by the guide as well as you.

  2. What's behind it?

    Never on a skyline with nothing behind but air. A bullet carries kilometres.

  3. Where will it fall?

    And is there a safe way to get there and back?

  4. Is there light and time?

    To reach it, cape it, and be back at the hut by dark.

  5. Can you make this shot, now?

    Breathing settled, solid rest, wind read, distance known. DOC warns that bull tahr are hard to stop when they're disturbed or poorly hit. If you are not sure, wait or walk closer.

VII
Looking after yourself

Legs, beacon, pack

Up is the work, down is the damage. The climbs are what you feel on day one. The descents, steep, loose, often in failing light with weight on your back, are where people get hurt, and the legs that do them are the legs you trained before you came.

Going up: short steps, a pace you could hold a conversation at, the whole boot flat on the ground where you can. On steep pitches, pause for a breath with each step and let a straight back leg take the weight for a moment, rather than stopping every hundred metres with your heart in your mouth.

Going down: knees soft, weight over your feet, small steps, and poles planted out in front. On the steepest ground turn side-on, or face in and climb down. Never run a slope you can't see the bottom of. Poles earn their place here: in a study of people walking down a steep ramp, using poles cut the forces through the knee by 12 to 25%.

A hunter carrying a whole tahr on his back down a shale slope
Plate VIIWhat goes up the hill easy comes down it on your back.
Up against down
Going up short steps, boot flat poles short
Fig. 9Up: lean in a little and keep the steps short.
Going down knees soft, small steps poles long, out in front
Fig. 10Down: stay over your feet and let the poles take some of it.
Nobody can ring you

There is no phone reception up there at all, not a scraped bar. Tell whoever needs to know that you are out of contact from the Thursday to the Monday, and mean it. Leave your trip details with someone reliable at home, using the Mountain Safety Council's Plan My Walk trip plan or its Outdoor Intentions Form: where you are, who you're with, when you expect to be out, and what to do if they haven't heard by then.

The party's link to the outside world is a PLB or a satellite device. Find out on day one who carries it and where it lives in their pack. If you bring your own beacon from home, keep it registered with AMSA in Australia: New Zealand's rescue centre says a beacon registered in your home country is fine to use while you visit, as long as your contacts know your plans.

When do you set a beacon off?

Only in grave and imminent danger, when there is no other way to get help: a serious injury, someone missing, someone hypothermic and getting worse. Get the antenna up under open sky. Once it is on, leave it on and stay where you are, because the beacon is how they find you.

And if it goes off by accident?

In New Zealand the rule is the opposite of what most people expect: leave it on, and contact the Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand on 0508 472 269, or +64 4 577 8030 from an overseas phone. There is no charge. In Australia, AMSA asks you to switch it off and call them. Know which country you're in.

What about a satellite phone or messenger?

A satellite phone can't call 111. New Zealand Police take calls from satellite phones on +64 9 571 2800. Messaging apps that call over data can't reach 111 either. Satellite messengers send two-way text and route an SOS through the maker's own response centre. All good to have. None replaces a registered beacon.

Is a rescue going to cost money?

NZ Police say people who are rescued are not expected to pay, though they can seek costs where someone has been reckless. What costs lives is waiting too long to ask, because the rescue helicopter can't fly at night or in cloud any more than the one that dropped you off.

What is the hut book for?

Write in it: names, date, where you're going and when you expect back. The Mountain Safety Council calls it a must-do. If a search starts, it is one of the first places searchers look, and other people's entries can show where you were last seen.

Lore

Kea. New Zealand's mountain parrot, found only in the South Island, and a lot smarter than you would like. Settlers paid a bounty on them, and about 150,000 were shot between 1860 and 1970. The bounty ended in 1971, full protection came in 1986, and they are now Nationally Endangered, with DOC estimating between 1,000 and 5,000 left. They are busiest at dawn and dusk and drawn to white, yellow and red gear, and DOC's list of their exploits includes locking someone in a toilet.

Kea and your camp

Leave nothing out and feed them nothing. Pack up the camp each morning and keep soft gear in hard bags. Kea also scavenge carcasses, and lead bullet fragments poison them, so DOC and the Game Animal Council ask hunters in kea country to use lead-free bullets, or to take, bury or hide the bullet-damaged meat.

A kea in flight, showing the scarlet under its wings
Plate VIIIKea. Olive on top, scarlet under the wings, and nothing in your pack is safe.
The pack
  • Boots you have already walked inStiff sole, over the ankle, broken in well before the plane.
  • Wet weather jacket and overtrousersBoth, not just the jacket. It rains on more than half of October days up there.
  • GaitersKeeps scree, snow and spaniard out of your boots.
  • Thermals, top and bottomMerino. Two sets: one to hunt in, one that never leaves the hut dry bag.
  • Good socks, more than you thinkMerino again. A dry pair at the hut is the best part of the day.
  • A mid layerFleece or a light puffer. Hot climbing, cold the moment you stop to glass.
  • Gloves and a beanieMost of the heat goes off your head while you lie still behind the glass.
  • A day pack, 30 to 40 litresYour layers up the hill, and some of an animal back down it.
  • Sunglasses and sunscreenSnow throws the sun back up under your chin and nose.
  • Head torch and spare batteriesKeep the batteries warm overnight.
  • A warm sleeping bagRated for the cold. More than half the nights go below freezing.
  • Dry bagsOr bin liners. Something has to still be dry at the end of the day.
  • Poles, if your knees have opinionsUp is the work, down is the damage.
  • Your usual stuffMedications, and anything you can't buy in a hurry in a small town.

Already sorted

Rifles and ammunition, permits, passes and animal tags, the helicopter both ways, the hut, all the food and every transfer from the airport.

Leave at home

Cotton. Jeans, cotton hoodies, cotton socks. Wet cotton stops keeping you warm, and it never dries in a hut. At altitude that is a genuine problem, not just an uncomfortable one.

There is a shop stop

There's a stop at a hunting and fishing store once you land, so anything missing from this list can be picked up there, in New Zealand dollars. Then try the field game.