This winter's volunteer hut wardens may find it a little harder to manage their back country huts after a Department of Conservation (DOC) decision to withdraw their helicopter support.

Mostly retirees, the volunteers bring their own sleeping bags and provisions and are charged with managing their huts for a week at a time.

Duties include keeping the hut, kitchen and toilets clean and tidy, ensuring firewood and clean water is accessible, rationing toilet paper and checking (and sometimes collecting) fees.

Fifty-two volunteers from throughout New Zealand are currently signed up to carry out DOC's 'out of season' warden hut duties at Fiordland's Luxmore Hut on the Kepler Track Great Walk.

The Luxmore Hut is 1,085 meters above-sea-level and typically takes five to six hours to reach by foot or 10 to 15 minutes by helicopter.

DOC Operations Manager Te Anau John Lucus said they had used volunteers since 2014 to help manage hut facilities after ongoing out-of-season damage to the Luxmore Hut.

Volunteers were heli-transported to the hut along with their gear, he said.

[However] due to rising costs and a focus on reducing emissions, the Department has reviewed its processes and will no longer use helicopters to transport volunteers and their gear to Luxmore hut, Lucus said.

This aligns with other areas in the New Zealand where volunteers manage huts in the backcountry, he said.

Te Anau's Joy Ballard, who has volunteered at the Luxmore Hut for around 5 off-seasons, said the system had worked well but she wouldn't have done it if she hadn't had a helicopter ride up.

Bollard said they could have anywhere from four to twenty trampers a night.

Other times the only visitor you got was a possum or something scratching at the door, she said.

"You've got to be prepared."