Unlike the Avalanche Peak Track, Bealey Spur is a gentle hike on a well-trodden path to 1240m that doesn’t require high-level backcountry skills. The views are nonetheless spectacular, especially in fine weather.

Which we didn’t have. It was overcast and grey all around – the mountains, river, sky, and beech tree canopy all blending into a sickly, monotonous gloom. We set off anyway and despite the predominance of grey, enjoyed the climb up the spur through beech forest, passing by some steep drop-offs into a large canyon down to Bruce Stream.

At 1000m, with the weather considerably improved by then, and just in time, the path flattened out onto a plateau with fantastic views up the Mingha and Bealey rivers as they join the wide gravel bed of the braided Waimakariri River stretching west to east.

Further uphill, the track moved smoothly in and out of clusters of beech and across grasslands covered in tussock and subalpine scrub. It then gracefully wandered along a narrow boardwalk over marshland and passed by several tarns with great mountain and valley panoramas along the way.

There’s no summit marker on the little clearing at the halfway mark, only Bealey Spur Hut, an old Musterer’s Hut. The fragile structure painted a bright green looked exactly like the kind of backcountry hut I remembered from twenty years ago: a makeshift shack and crooked oversized chimney cobbled together from mismatched sheets of corrugated iron.

When I gingerly pushed open the white door, a flurry of powdered bark and lichen escaped in a plume of smoke coated stale air. That smell of soot, wet firewood, and burnt plastic rubbish, too, was unmistakable.

Six bunks made of sacking were fixed to the walls and supported on a frame of spindly beech saplings around a small wooden table covered with white candle wax. More wax was splattered on the rough wooden floor before a small bench for cooking. There was no window, only a tiny square cut into the roof and covered with a sheet of corrugated Nova light. With the door closed there was no ventilation and if I had to stay the night, I’d be seriously worried about carbon monoxide poisoning in there, and mice. If the visitor book is to be believed, the tiny rodents have claimed the hut as their permanent residence.

This is an out & back trail and we return to the trail head at the top of Cloudesley Road via the same track.