OPEN MOUNTAIN HUTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23708, 15 July 1940, Page 6

OPEN MOUNTAIN HUTS

TARARUA CLUB'S DECISION THE PROBLEM OF VANDALISM J [by telegraph—owx correspondent] WELLINGTON. Saturday The principle of maintaining mountain huts open to all who tramp the ranges was affirmed by the annual meeting of the Tararua Tramping Club last night, when a motion partially to depart from the club's policy in this respect was defeated. Mr. F. G. Fitzgerald moved that the back room in the Waerenga Hut in the Orongorongos should be kept locked, for the use of club members. He said members of the Tararua Club had been unable to obtain accommodation in their own hut through members of other clubs and tho public generally having taken prior possession. Miss M. I. Macpherson said she thought the club's policy of keeping all huts open to whoever came along encouraged the wrong kind of tramping —indiscriminate shooting parties and others. The object of the club was to encourage organised tramping, and keeping the huts open was an encouragement to the other sort. Club members complained of vandalism by strangers using huts in the ranges. At the Holdsworth Hut bunks had been cut up for firewood, and the luit was now barely habitable; from another hut a cooking stove had been purloined. Mr. Fitzgerald said it was only proposed to ciose the one room of that particular hut, and that the result would be to provide a higher standard of comfort for club members. Tho motion was lost.