The sacred value of the maunga
In typical fashion the weather during the recent school holidays was pretty rotten. Happily the sun did put in the odd appearance, allowing for some lawn mowing and providing quite good conditions for the Waikato Tramping Club’s snowcraft course on the final weekend.
While it is a time of the year that many people head to the mountains for skiing, my interest is always drawn to high country heritage, rather than the depth of the powder and the length of the chair lift queue.
Knowing where my priorities lie, my son kindly photographed a small building at the foot of the Whakapapa Glacier in Tongariro National Park whilst learning how to climb safely in alpine environments with the WTC.
A plaque mounted on the entrance porch records that this is the ‘Glacier Hut’, which was the first to be built by the Ruapehu Ski Club on the skifield.
A date of 1923 is given and the plaque also records that the hut was preserved by the club in memory of the pioneers of mountain skiing.
Since 1989 the hut has been used as a small museum, which is owned and operated by the ski club.
A small, six-bunk hut, the building is clad in corrugated iron and was originally heated by an oil stove; the door and windows were all replaced before the museum opened.
The Department of Conservation records that the hut was ‘New Zealand’s first purpose-built structure for the sport of skiing’.
The Ruapehu Ski Club was formed in the winter of 1914 and, under the leadership of William (Bill) Salt, a hut for members was erected in 1923.
It was said to be the highest building in the North Island as it neared completion in April of that year.
The hut was extended in 1946, by which time a number of other huts were extant, or were soon to be built, on the maunga.
One such hut had been built at Scoria Flat in 1931 as a memorial to Bill Salt, a Whanganui bridge builder who was club president at the time of his untimely death in 1929.
The increasing popularity of alpine recreation in the post-war period can be judged by the fact that in 1950 the Tongariro National Park Board issued permits for eleven huts to be erected on Mt Ruapehu by a cohort of alpine, tramping and ski clubs.
By this time the Ruapehu Ski Club had almost 1000 members and was therefore planning a 50-bunk lodge to be built from stone quarried on the site.
The hut is listed as a category 1 historic place by Heritage NZPT and scheduled on the Ruapehu District Plan.
Since 1990 it has been located within the Tongariro National Park World Heritage Site, which was inscribed by UNESCO as a natural heritage property in that year.
In 1993 the inscription was amended to also recognise the park as a cultural heritage site due to the sacred value of the maunga to Mā ori; this was the first property in the world to be inscribed according to UNESCO’s revised criteria for cultural landscapes.