AT WELCOME FLAT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21130, 12 March 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

AT WELCOME FLAT.

CAMPING IN THE MOUNTAINS

BY ELSIE K. MORTON

Welcome Flat is well-named, for its hot, springs make it a veritable oasis of comlort and refreshment in the wilderness. You may travel New Zealand from one end to the other, but nowhere else will you find, at the end of a long ride through virgin forests, a comfortable little hut in a green valley encircled by rock walls with jagged peaks mounting thousands of feet into the sky, where, under the shadow of the eternal snows, you may take an open-air bath in a- delicious warm pool behind a screen of native trees. Some day the hot springs at Welcome Flat will draw holiday-makers to this wild, beautilul spot, and Copland Valley will become known to the tourist, world. the sun was setting when I made my way to the hot pool, a stone's throw trom tlie hut. The valley was deepshadowed by the mighty wall of the Sierras, but over in the east, ten thousand feet, up in the f ky, the last rays of the sun fell upon the peak of Sefton in a. glory of crimson flame, and the stark rock walls above the little, hut were lit with an unearthly, copper-red glow. Ihe water in the pool was deliciously warm, of that silky softness that penetrates the skin and takes away every suggestion of stiffness or weariness. The first, bright star was twinkling over the mountains when I returned to the hut, to find a great log blazing in the lireplace, chops and bacon frizzling cheerily, bunks made up and table set. for tea. The Welcome Flat hut is a spacious, tliree-roomed one, with eight bunks in each of the bedrooms, and a plentiful supply of rugs and simple camp equipment.

The Douglas Hut. Next- morning we crossed t lie swing bridge over the Copland and followed a track through a dense shrubbery of Alpine growth, ribbonwood, coprosnia, koromiko, and kotukutuku. Up and up wo climbed for three or four miles, with the roar of the river m our oars and the. silent- beauty of llio mountains ever drawing us on. A stiff scramble over *a pile of enormous rocks in the bed of a foaming mountain torrent, a final pull up the bank and through the forest, and we were in a little clearing, just wide enough to give comfortable setting to Ihe Douglas Hut, six miles from Welcome Flat. This hut was only completed last summer, and gives accommodation to climbers taking the Copland Pass route across the. Alps, who for many years past have spent the. night in the shelter of Douglas Rock, a quart er-of-a-mile farther on. Douglas Hut is built of corrugated iron, with the wide, hospitable fireplace of all mountain huts; it has two good-sized rooms, each with separate entrance, one a sleeping room, with four bunks, for women, the other a roomy kitchen, with bunks built into one side, for the men. One takes these mountain huts and their equipment as a matter of course, but think of the labour of packing all that load of iron and timber, glass for the windows, axes, saws, and even a grindstone for sharpening them, over nearly thirty miles of rough forest, river-bed, and mountain track from Karangarua. Horses can be taken only as far as Welcome Flat; from there everything had to be packed oil the backs of men. Some day, one hopes, there will be erected somewhere in the Southern Alps a memorial to the men who built the mountain huts of Canterbury and Westland, Malto Brun, the. Hooker and the Ball, high up beneath the shadow of mighty Aorangi; the Aimer, up in the eternal snows beneath the Great Divide; Defiance, on the rugged mountain slopes beneath which surge the ice waves of Franz Josef. Tile setting of Douglas Hut is magnificent; the surrounding bush is dense and beautiful, and the eye travels over the top of mighty ratas and birch trees to a sheer ruck wall up—up five thousand feet to a hanging glacier, and over all, transcendent, glorious, the dazzling snowcap of Sefton. From the door of the hut one looks out to the Copland Range and the precipitous slopes of Strauchon Valley. Sunrise on the Heights.

At sunset and sunrise glory tin speakable is revealed to those wiio sojourn a night at Douglas Huf. In the cold, clear hour before sunrise I was out in the little clearing, awaiting that first kindling of fire on the heights that comes ever as sublime and soul-moving experience to the. mountain lover. First the melting of the cold, hard blue sky into primrose, a lightening of thfl violet shadows on distant snowfields and glacier-bung heights. Brighter and brighter grow the hidden fires—a golden streak, thin as a pencil line, was etched on the crest of Sefton's snowy peak, ten thousand feet up in the sky. As a runner speeding 011 swift feet, the sun hastens on his way; the streak of gold runs in lines of living fire down those glittering slopes and right and left across the rim of the rocky barrier of the Sierras. The fires sweep lower, 111 widening circle, lighting up the awesome chasms and fissures of (he terrific precipice that drops straight down from Sefton to the head of Copland Valley. As I watched, spell bound, there came a sudden roar, and a huge mass of ice and snow up near the top of the rockwall went crashing down—down—a sheer four thousand feet, the snow rising in smoking clouds like spray from a vast waterfall. . . Oh, the infinite smallness, the insignificance of man,- as measured by that snowy avalanche, crashing gloriously, shouting defiance, leaping with measureless stride from unconquered heights to hidden depths! Breakfast over, we packed lunch, and took the upward trail once more. A few minutes' walk brought us to Douglas rock, a. truly wonderful natural bivouac, an enormous rock with overhanging fop, set in I lie heart of the bush, and leaving beneath a clear space of twelve square feet. Here, sheltered by the rock and by thick growth 011 either side, many a climber lias taken liis rest, looking out from his sleeping liag through the clear space of the opening to the mountain tops and tho starlit sky beyond. Truly the wonders of Cod and His universe are brought very close fo (lie heart of those who make llieir abiding place in the shadow of (he everlasting hills. . . . .We came" out of the bush to (he stony ridge of one of the lower spurs of the Sierras. We might, have gone on to the snowy heights beyond, where the. ''opland Pass le;ids over the Alps into Canterbury, hut the beauty and peace. of this lovely valley claimed me, for T knew I should pass this way 110 more. ...

So we crossed the valley (o Ihe footof a small glacier, and here, amid rocks and wild flowers, we built a (ire, filled the billy with cri. p snow, and had lunch. " Here in the Quiet Hills." The sun was sinking behind the leagues of forest and purple shadows were climbing up the walls of the mountains when we returned. . . . Very dark and eerie looked the cave beneath the rock as we passed; very cold the night wind t hat came sighing down from the snowy heights. Glad I was to bo returning to Ihe blaze of a great log fire, hot, coffee, and the warm comfort of blankets and a bunk!

'I he shadows of night deepened. Through the open door I watched the stars, like silver flowers, leap out one by one on the night-blue fields of the sky. Far up on the crest of Seflon the cloud fairies wove a silver web of mist; far down in tlio valley the river folk chanted their lonely night song. . . Hush of the mountains, music of the waters, and song of the stars . . . thus it was in the world's first dawning, thus will it. be to the end, when all the clamour of earth's little day shall have ceased, and only the music of the starry spheres sing the last soul upward to realms of uttermost peace.