Wednesday 8 October 2025
Crosbies Hut 2025
Last weekend I went back to Crosbies Hut in Coromandel for the fourth time (first time, second time, don’t seem to have documented the third time). It’s pretty accessible from Auckland but these days it gets booked far ahead, so we had to book it back in May. I took a whole group this time — three parents, six kids and me. It went well but it was harder than I expected!
We took the Waiotahi Track and I should have remembered that DoC’s “5 hours” estimate is very optimistic. Furthermore it’s the end of the winter and it has been wet, so unsurprisingly there was a lot of mud. And we had some small kids including a four-year-old! So all in all it’s not surprising it took us nearly eight hours on each day. Tough for some of the kids, although perhaps surprisingly the four-year-old handled it rather well. Stuffing him with snacks every 20 minutes seemed to do the trick.
The weather forecast wasn’t great, but fortunately we only had about 20 minutes of rain on each day, so overall that was pretty good.
We didn’t have as much hut time as expected but we did have enough time for hot chocolate, popcorn, toasting marshmellows, sausages for dinner, and bacon and eggs for breakfast. We didn’t have time to play our card games but otherwise it was OK.
Overall, after we’ve all recovered, I think it’s a real confidence-builder. Quite a lot of tracks are easier than this, so these families have options.
