MOUNTAIN MEMORIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 800, 19 November 1954, Page 31

MOUNTAIN MEMORIES

OOK at a map of Arthur Pass National Park in the Southern Alps and you'll find along the road that leads over the pass from Arthur Pass township to Otira a place marked Jack’s Hut. It’s a well-known landmark-a small green cottage that stands a little back from the road with the bush all around. Right opposite is the track that leads up the Bealey Valley to the Bealey Glacier under the slopes of Mt. Rolleston, and just a little bit farther up the road is The Lookout, where you get, through a gap in the trees, such a magnificent view of the mountain. Jack’s Hut is a holiday cottage, but for Grace Adams it isn’t just another holiday cottage. In the coaching days, when it was a roadman’s hut, her parents camped opposite it many times. Then more than 30 years ago they bought it, and ever since it has had a very special place in the affections of the family. This cottage is the "hut of memories" which Mrs, Adams talks about in the first of the series From the Southern Alps, Already heard from 3YA, these talks will start from 2YA in the Business Women’s Session at 10.30 a.m. this Saturday (November 20). Besides talking about the hut, Mrs. Adams tells the story of Jack the roadman after whom the hut is named-‘"a lonely, wild-eyed Irishman, illiterate, superstitious, but as kind as he was shy’"-a man whose job it was to keep the road in order for the horses and coaches that went over the pass and down through the Otira.Gorge in the days before the turmel. Only the first talk is about Jack’s Hut, but it is a talk that will stir nostalgic memories for those who have spent a holiday at "The Pass"-as Canterbury folk know it-and trudged up over the Pass in the sunlight or through the snow. The second talk by Mrs. Adams is about deer (and stags in particular), and in two further talks she tells the life story of a parka-her first parka-and of some of the embarrassments of learning to ski.