4 July, 2025

Outdoorsman finds his way to 900-plus huts

Hut-bagger, orienteer and volunteer in the back country and locally, Geoff Mead spoke to Rob Drent about his very active retirement.

Hut-bagger, orienteer and volunteer in the back country and locally, Geoff Mead spoke to Rob Drent about his very active retirement.

Geoff Mead loves the mountains, but they almost killed him.
In 1981, in his 20s, he was climbing in the Andes in South America with Kiwi mates when he was struck down with altitude sickness. “I was rescued by the Chilean Military.”
As Mead recalls, it was all down to his own stupidity. His group had caught a bus 10 hours into the mountains and then walked into altitude for three days. The acclimatisation wasn’t enough. Mead was struck down so badly he was left unconscious, with vomit in his lungs.
His fellow climbers couldn’t move him. They rushed down the mountain and luckily ran into some Chilean mountaineers who, as Spanish speakers, contacted the authorities who sent a helicopter to bring Mead to the safety of a hospital in Santiago.
“I got very careful about altitude after that,” Mead says matter-of-factly.
The incident didn’t put him off the outdoors, though. Far from it: he’s spent much of his adult life running, tramping, orienteering and cycling.
He’s gone all over the world on adventures and “bagged” – visited – 902 backcountry huts, some in the remotest parts of New Zealand.
Mead (68) was born in Wellington but with his father a civil engineer with New Zealand Railways, the family moved around before settling in Mairangi Bay. Geoff went to Westlake Boys High School in his seventh form year, and has generally lived on the North Shore since then – for the last 36 years in Devonport.
He went to the University of Auckland, completed a Bachelor of Science and went on to a career in statistics.
He took up tramping with a vengeance while at university, going to the South Island in the summer holidays for four years and sometimes during other university breaks as well. He particularly enjoyed the more remote routes of the Southern Alps, completing many transalpine routes above the bush line, including the Garden of Eden and Garden of Allah ice-field tramps.
If all the routes he took were linked up, over time he effectively navigated from Nelson to Fiordland.
He became used to using crampons and an ice axe and “became a very good tramper”.
Mead’s idea of student heaven was a job in Fiordland as a geology field assistant. The team was flown into Dusky Sound with a month’s food and then walked week-long loops out into the wilds and back.
“As we ate our food we would replace it with the same weight [in geological samples] and carry them back.”
Tramping proved life-changing in other ways as well. He met wife Lisa on a university tramping trip.
Going into the backcountry was completely different in the 1970s to what it is today.
“There was no real weather forecast, no GPS. We would sometimes take a mountain radio but there were no PLB [personal locator beacon].
“We had to learn to be self-sufficient – so in that respect were pretty lucky.”
It helped teach Mead a safety-first approach of careful planning and showing respect for the terrain and the weather, especially the way rainfall affects rivers in New Zealand. “I’ve had lots of experience with rivers.”

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“It’s really just an excuse to explore the remote parts of New Zealand… When we go on holiday we look around to see if there are any huts nearby to bag.”

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His tip: rivers go down as fast as they go up. Once rain stops they go down. Wait it out before crossing.
The wilds of New Zealand were in those days peppered with four-to-six-bunk huts established by the Forest Service in the 1960s and early 1970s for deer-stalkers.
They’d been made available to trampers.
“We’d hitchhike everywhere, so food was our only real expense.”
Mead worked for the Statistics Department for 30 years in a variety of jobs, eventually running IT projects.
He became increasingly focused on running and took up orienteering, taking part in his first event at One Tree Hill in 1979.
“We had friends who were orienteering.” Geoff and Lisa started casually, then “decided it was a really good sport”.
It offered beginners’ courses, longer courses for young athletes and shorter technical courses, which Geoff specialises in now.
It proved a great family sport for the Meads and their son, Nick, when he was younger.
A lot of Geoff’s tramping has involved the skills learned in orienteering.
“I love the challenge [of orienteering]. It’s a real test – half thinking, half physical. You have to study a map and terrain and concentrate on not getting lost and make decisions on the fly.”
And he was good at it. Mead won two New Zealand Mountain Marathon events – navigation courses held over two days; a world mixed veterans’ championship title with Lisa in 2000 as well as several mixed mountain titles, and several national age group orienteering titles – the most recent in the 65-plus age group at Christchurch in Easter.
Around 15 years ago Mead read an article in Wilderness magazine about someone who had bagged 500 huts. It piqued his interest and he decided to add a few to the hundreds he had visited in earlier years.
He retired aged around 56 so he could do more of what he loved.
By 2017 he had bagged 674; now he’s up to 902. He visited Poutaki Hut, Ellis Hut (also known as Murderer’s Hut) and Smiths Stream Hut, all in Ruahine Forest Park in Hawke’s Bay, in January this year.
He’s ranked fourth-top hut bagger on the popular New Zealand Hut Baggers website.
“It’s really just an excuse to explore the remote parts of New Zealand… When we go on holiday we look around to see if there are any huts nearby to bag.”
Lisa has visited many with him and on the Hut Baggers site has logged 578.
“She sometimes gets a bit nervous when we start going down a remote country road – as we could be heading into the bush somewhere.”

Planning his next trip… Geoff Mead at home in Devonport, letting his mind wander into the back country

He estimates New Zealand has around 1200 huts and doesn’t know how many more he will add to his total. Obviously the more remote ones are hard to get to; many would involve special expeditions to bag.
His first post-retirement trip was the South Island section of Te Araroa, walking Picton to Bluff with Lisa.
In addition to his hut-bagging in New Zealand, overseas trips have beckoned too. The couple have completed a grand route trek in France over three months – from Lake Geneva to Nice through the French Alps; a high route through the Pyrenees between France and Spain over a month; and three or four long cycling tours in Europe.
“It helps that Lisa can speak French and German,” says Geoff.
He had one knee replaced in 2016 and the other in 2023. “I wore them out, basically.” The operations haven’t held him back, with cycling a key part of him being able to build leg strength and continue with his wider physical activities. He uses trekking poles when tramping and tries to do balance and strength exercises for his legs most days.
His ongoing fitness has allowed him to give back to the track network he has enjoyed so much. He did track cutting for the Kaimai Ridgeway Trust, which reopened old forest service tracks to the public. Likewise he’s also done track cutting for the Backcountry Trust. He also helped build part of the Old Ghost Roadtrack in the South Island, living in the Ghost Lake Hut and helping cut the track’s famous switchbacks.
Lisa, meanwhile, made the explosives used to break up rock to allow the track to go through.
In Devonport, Geoff volunteers for environmental group Restoring Takarunga Hauraki, doing planting, weed control and building work. “It’s close to home and about people doing good things.” He prefers practical outside jobs to administration tasks.
He’s looking to keep competing in orienteering events well into his 70s.
Modern tramping equipment makes it easier to keep bagging those huts, too. “It’s low-weight tramping now. It’s good physically.”
That allows him to go further over steep terrain. “We are carrying about half of the weight we used to carry.”
Dehydrated meals come in all shapes and sizes; packs, sleeping bags, mats and tents are all lighter. “Although these days you can spend $1000 on a tent.”
Accommodation in huts has also improved. With DoC foregoing the maintenance on many remote huts, groups like the Backcountry Trust and Permolat in the South Island have effectively taken them over, often rebuilding them with insulation and wood burners.
“Most of them have been tidied up, which is really fantastic.”
While he’s lost some of his running speed, Mead has found a stamina in older age which is helped by cycling and tramping.
Geoff and Lisa have no trouble keeping fit around Auckland, are a familiar sight walking at a brisk pace in Devonport and often head south on the train then cycle back. “It’s mostly on country roads with no traffic.”
A couple of weeks ago they got off in Huntly and cycled out to the Nikau Caves on the West Coast, through to Port Waikato and then home.
This summer Mead plans another South Island trip inland from the Molesworth area in Marlborough. He enthusiastically points out the route on a map – “near the Saxton River, there’s a rough tramping track”.
There may even be another hut or two to bag.