A Hut Among the Mountains

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 531, 26 August 1949, Page 4

A Hut Among the Mountains

OST people who read our | A of the making of a film, Prelude to Aspiring, will wish that they had been able ‘to go up the valley of the Matukituki when a hut was opened near the snowline. They would be less envious if they did not know what it means to be among the mountains. Many New Zealanders are only modest climbers, and there ‘are some who do not climb at all; but few of them have no: hills among their memories. The ranges are. close to our homes: we can see them from our streets, and often from our windows, and a short journey will usually take us ‘to their lower slopes. In the South Island the mountains are dominant; it is there that we must go in search of unclimbed New ZealJand. Noble peaks have been conquered, but many others are still virginal. Even the summits that have been reached are not tamed. Every ascent is a new conquest, made after a struggle for which climbers must prepare carefully, and in which they must use their strength and skill while time slips away and the shadows rise swiftly, all too swiftly, from the valleys. The approach to.a mountain is in itself an enterprise that would seem hard enough to people who are not trained for alpine effort and hazards. Experience makes the way a little easier, and the hut that was built within reach of Aspiring is now one of our base camps in the Southern Alps. It is, indeed, a symbol for the unending assault.’ A hut in which 50 or more people can sleep may seem to be a substantial building, an indication that in this region, as elsewhere, the hardest pioneering work has been done. But three years were needed before the Otago section of the New Zealand Alpine Club, making use of a few holiday week-ends and voluntary labour, could finish a useful task; and in spite of the ample accommodation it will be 4 narrow foothold in the wilderness. Yet it will

give shelter to generations of trampers who will be drawn into country where Aspiring is like a ruler among the mountains. They will start from its door on the climb to French Ridge Bivouac, beyond which are the ice slopes and the final ascent. For most of us, the peak will remain hidden among its veils: we can see it only from a distance, or through the imagination. If we glance at the photograph on page 6 it should be easier to understand why men and women of high spirit must always be drawn to a testing adventure. Aspiring is one of the noblest of our mountains, and one of the few, perhaps, which have names in ne need of alteration. The peak lifts itself austerely, and with a slender thrusting look, from the icefields which fall massively from its shoulders. It is like a monument to an ancient chaos from which these islands received the anatomy they. were to bear through ages of human history. And perhaps also it is a reminder that the torn crests can change and crumble again, until the serrated skyline is lost in a new panorama. But most of all the peak symbolises a challenge which the whole of this country throws out to its inhabitants. Aspiring Hut will be empty and cold for many months in the year, and when its hearth is warm it will cast only a faint gleam into the wilderness. Yet human warmth, frail though it may seem in the alpine solitudes, has a strange pertinacity which can take it to the highest places. Climbers may make their journeys for different reasons, but most of them would confess that it is a spiritual satisfaction which awaits them when the summit has been reached. A hut among the mountains is both an outpost and a stronghold: an outpost for the tramper, and a stronghold for what he represents-the spirit which drives men to go out and possess the land, even where possession is | merely the right to look down and wonder.