MOUNTAIN REFUGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 October 1938, Page 6

MOUNTAIN REFUGE

INAUGURATION CEREMONY. The mountain refuge which three French Ministers of State, M. Chautemps, M. Jean Zay, and M. L. O. Frossard inauguated on August 21, within fifteen hundred feet of the 15,772 feet summit of Mont Blanc, is the highest refuge in the world. To reach the refuge the Ministers climbed with a small party all roped together. A Franco-British character was appropriately given to this ceremony connected with Mont Blanc, which has always been a favourite with British climbers, by the presence of Sir Claude Chester, President of the British Alpine Club, and M. Leon Olivier, President of the Club Alpin Francais. Mr H. E. G. Tyndale, editor of the Alpine Journal, will also present. The inauguration was the highest official ceremony which has ever taken place, and Mass was celebrated by a French priest. The refuge has been named the Val-lot-Mont Blanc refuge in honour of the late Joseph Vallot, mountaineer and scientist. It took only twenty days to build, for each part had been made separately. Porters carried the sections from the cog-railway terminus at the Col de Voza, 12,664 feet, a climb of some difficulty to the spot 1647 feet higher where the refuge is erected at an altitude of 14,311 feet.Constructed of a double casing of aluminium, the materials weigh seven and a half tons, instead of something like a hundred tons had it been made of stone. The interior is fireproof, and the furniture is made of duralumin, an aluminium composition. The mattresses and blankets are of asbestos, and there are twenty-four bunks set in two rows one above the other. The space between the inner and outer shell of the refuge is filled with material which will keep out the cold. The sides and roof have also been treated with a special substance making them watertight. The refuge is fixed to the mountain by means of huge blocks of granite in the basement. There is a common room 16 feet long by 10 feet wide, a stove, fuel, and first-aid outfit. An original feature of the refuge is the horizontal entrance by means of a trap. This has been achieved by building a sort of sentry-box annexe half-way up the side of the hut, and it is the floor of this sentry-box, reached by a ladder from below, which is pushed up to ; effect entrance. This avoids the danger of the entrance to the refuge being broken down by the weight of 1 driving snow, as can happen in the ■ case of an ordinary doorway. The inauguration ceremony was broadcast. ’