The new Ball Shelter, flown by helicopter to a site in the Tasman Valley, near Aoraki/Mount Cook, yesterday morning, might not be palatial but the surrounding vista is five-star.
Comments from an old visitors book from the previous Ball Shelter, which was demolished two years ago as it was under threat from the collapsing moraine wall of the Tasman Glacier, are testament to the spectacular scenery.
"Best place I've slept". "Quiet, small place in the middle of paradise". "Never seen such scenery". "Beautiful, just beautiful."
The new Ball Shelter is the fourth in the area since the first Ball Hut was built in 1891 on the site of "Green's 5th Camp", a reference to mountaineer the Rev William Green, his companion Emil Boss and their guide Ulrich Kaufmann, the first Europeans known to have used the route up the west side of the Tasman Glacier.
In 1882, the trio made the first attempt to climb Mt Cook, and the rock remains of Mr Green's shelter still sit near the Ball Shelter site.
The next to follow Mr Green's route were George Mannering and Marmaduke Dixon, whose footsteps were retraced this week by adventurers Steve Gurney and Steve Moffatt, who passed the Ball Shelter site on Wednesday, after climbing on Aoraki/Mt Cook.
The new Ball Shelter hut was built in a workshop at Hilderthorpe, just north of Oamaru, by Recreation Construction Ltd. Owner Clint O'Brien has lost count of the number of huts he has built.
Weighing about 940kg and measuring just 3m x 2.4m, it boasts three bunks, a fourth mattress which can be used on the floor, a bench, and the hut has a water tank on its side.
The flight of the hut by helicopter and easy installation was a far cry from that very first Ball Hut. All the materials were backpacked to the site for 3km from the point pack-horses could reach on the then-new bridle track, while some of the more awkward loads came on men's backs.
An extract from a New Zealand Alpine Club journal said while built to cater to tourists, the hut would have seemed impossibly primitive to modern tourists. Described as a two-roomed edifice, the hut was simply a corrugated iron shell, with an earth floor, divided into men's and women's quarters by a canvas curtain, each section containing four canvas-bottomed bunks.
It was the first purely recreational hut to be built in the Southern Alps and, today, only the floor-slab remains.
The new Ball Shelter has been installed as an emergency shelter, although Department of Conservation staff expect it will also be popular with trampers.
Passing through the area yesterday was Massey University PhD student Rob Dykes, who is studying the retreat of the Tasman Glacier and the processes of icebergs calving off.
