NEW ALPINE HUT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27010, 9 April 1953, Page 12

NEW ALPINE HUT

SITE AT HEAD OF FOX GLACIER boulder Foundation at 8200 FEET Good weather and stores that had remained intact since the Christmas holidays favoured a party of five men who built a new hut for the New Zealand Alpine Club on Pioneer ridge, at the head of the Fox Glacier. For many years the building of the hut was considered too hazardous an undertaking. The new building provides an excellent base from which several 10,000-foot peaks may be climbed. Messrs A. Sidler, G. Scott. J. Hamilton, A. Hemmingson and S. Muirson used sledge hammers, cold chisels and timber jacks to form a level platform from huge boulders at an altitude of 8200 feet. On this platform they built in three days a hut measuring 14 feet by 10 feet. The hut occupies all the space on the platform except strips two feet wide on each side.- Below is a drop of 100 feet. While building the hut, the party lived in narrow snow caves where food and timber, dropped by the Royal New Zealand Air Force during the Christmas holidays, had been stored. All the goods, including perishable supplies, were found in excellent order. The materials were transferred to the hut site by means of a “flying fox” rigged by the party.

The party left Christchurch on a Thursday, and by Sunday night the floor of the hut had been laid. The hut was completed externally by midday on the following Tuesday, and it was stocked with food, cooking utensils and kerosene.

During the building of the hut the weather remained excellent on the mountain tops, although it was noticeably poor at lower levels.