Each year, the Siberia Hut, in Mt Aspiring National Park, attracts about 2000 users, as a popular overnight stay for trampers on the Gillespie Pass circuit track, as Sally Rae reports.
When fire razed the Siberia Hut in Mt Aspiring National Park in 2011, former Department of Conservation ranger Clint O'Brien felt ''bloody sad''.
Mr O'Brien might have already left Makarora to return to his home patch of North Otago, but after more than 20 years in the area, the news hit him hard.
''It was one of those places that was like your special place. I used to love going there. It was the sort of place you always wanted to take your visitors. I was gutted when I heard it burnt down,'' he recalled.
The relatively short plane trip from Makarora to the landing strip in the Siberia Valley took visitors from civilisation to total wilderness.
''Get out on the [air] strip and it's total solitude. It's a bloody beautiful spot,'' Mr O'Brien said.
Nine months after the fire, the hut was replaced with a new building. It might have had a different layout but it was still on the same footprint, with the same view up the valley.
Costing about $350,000, it was a far cry from the Siberia Hut that was built in the late 1950s during the heady days of deer culling in the area.
The builder of that hut, Alan Duncan, now living in South Canterbury, chuckled that it was much cheaper - it only cost ''a few gallons of petrol'' for a chainsaw.
Mr Duncan was hunting deer in the area and used to stay in another old hut, which was home to a conscientious objector during the war. It was also ''pretty leaky''.
He felled a large silver beech tree, cut it into planks and fashioned a hut out of those planks. While he admitted he would not like to embark on such a project now, it was ''amazing'' what you could do when you were young, he said.
While fairly basic, it was a good, comfortable hut and, most importantly, it did not leak, he recalled.
Mr Duncan, who also later flew both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters in the area, recalled it as being a great time in his life.
Following the establishment of Mt Aspiring National Park, a 10-bunk hut was built alongside Mr Duncan's creation and the old beech hut later became the hut warden's quarters.
By that stage, the deer cullers had gone but it was becoming an increasingly popular destination for trampers as part of the three-day Gillespie Pass circuit.
The formation of a track up to The Crucible, a small mountain lake at the head of the valley, meant people started staying an extra night in the hut, causing crowding.
Money from a bequest went into a major upgrade of the hut, with a further 10 bunks added. The old beech hut was pulled down and some of the materials - including its floor - were recycled to build a woodshed and small workshop on the site.
Former Makarora-based Doc ranger Chris Wilson, now working for Mr O'Brien's firm Recreation Construction, recalled the day when he got a call to say Siberia Hut appeared to be on fire.
He and helicopter pilot Harvey Hutton flew in, but by the time they arrived, the hut was ''basically burnt right to the ground''. They helped evacuate trampers and, like Mr O'Brien, Mr Wilson was saddened by the incident.
''It's pretty gutting when you've done all that work over the years on it and spent a lot of time there,'' he said.
Mr O'Brien and Mr Wilson spent many nights in the Siberia Hut, particularly during the early years of the Siberia Track upgrade which started on October 19, 1996 and was completed on April 26, 2003.
As a ''true grit'' certificate awarded to Mr O'Brien at the completion of the work said, it was ''7800m of blood, sweat and tears''.
In that seven years, life changed dramatically for those involved with the project - there were marriages, the arrival of children, and other life-changing events.
For Mr Wilson, building the track, and the ''hard yakka'' it entailed, seemed a lifetime ago.
''When I first started that track, I was just out of school, basically. By the time I finished, I had got married and, about a year after that, built a house and had kids. By the time the track had finished, lives had changed,'' he said.
Mr O'Brien acknowledged it was a massive undertaking and, when it came to technology and equipment, they started with only the bare essentials, learning as they went.
While they started with a ''hiss and a roar'' along the flat, once they started hitting rock, they had to blast their way through and there was definitely an element of danger.
''Where Clint had that digger was pretty dodgy in some places. If you'd buggered up on the controls, you'd be over into the gorge. You couldn't afford to have an accident. Have an accident - you were dead,'' Mr Wilson said.
It was Mr O'Brien's wife, Barbara, back home in Makarora, who was their link to the outside world, manning an HF radio each night.
It was via radio that she had to relay information including the news of deaths and also of a happier nature - such as the impending arrival of the couple's twins.
She had to work out how she was going to tell her husband that she was pregnant, with the ''whole of Fiordland listening'', so told him that they probably needed to build the extra bedroom they had been talking about.
Even though it was remote, the area still attracted lots of visitors. While working on the track, Mr O'Brien recalled how they could be passed by between 60 and 70 people ''on a good day''.
''One thing about Siberia Valley, it's a remote wilderness but you can take mum and the kids there,'' he said, adding he did take his mother there when she was 90.
''It's accessible for people of all ages. And they feel like they are in the wilderness and they are in the wilderness, but it's safe,'' he said.
Ask Paul Cooper if he ever tires of flying into the Siberia Valley and the answer is emphatic - ''hell no''.
He might be a frequent flyer, as his company Southern Alps Air operates the scenic aeroplane flight component of Siberia Experience, but the trip was always enjoyable.
That was as much about the people, as the flying, and the pleasure he got from seeing their obvious enjoyment at their wilderness experience.
''Mostly the scenery blows people away, and no people. They can't believe it,'' he said.
Not that you could please everybody. He was once abused by some tourists from Hong Kong who could not believe that there was flat land and water - and no houses in the area.
The Siberia Experience has been operating since 1975, involving a flight into the valley, a three-hour bush walk followed by a rendezvous with a jet-boat in the Wilkin Valley for the journey back to Makarora.
Mr Cooper, who has been flying into the valley since 1991, reckoned the experience was ''second-to-none'' - ''we get told that pretty often'' - and possibly the only same combination of activities in New Zealand.
He was dealing with a diverse range of people, from babies through to the elderly, predominantly Australians, followed by Brits, a few Americans and then a mix of other nationalities.
Getting up in the mountains was ''quite a thing'' for a lot of people, particularly if they came from the likes of urban New York.
''There's a lot of happy people, it's a pretty easy job,'' he said.
Siberia Hut
MT ASPIRING NATIONAL PARK
• Mount Aspiring National Park was established in 1964)
• New Zealand's third largest national park (355,543ha)
SIBERIA HUT
• Has about 2000 overnight visitors a year
• 40-year-old hut destroyed by fire in 2011
• Has been rebuilt
• Now is a 20-bunk facility with heating
• Operates on a first come, first served basis.
• Backcountry hut tickets are required to pay for your stay but do not guarantee a bunk
• Access via the Gillespie Pass Circuit, a three- to four-day tramp over 58km.
• It is possible to fly by plane or helicopter from both Siberia and Kerin Forks, 7km away. You can also catch a jet-boat from Kerin Forks.
