That Lagoon Shelter hut where the couple stayed in the snow dump recently used to have a great wee pot belly stove. Now it's been taken out and I would have been highly motivated to get the hell out of there rather than stay a few nights. No bunks, just benches these days. Very sad.
The old Mountain House in the Tararuas wasn't too flash either. We had driven down from Rotorua then walked up to it on friday night, arriving sometime after midnight. There were no matresses and everything was covered in a sort of green slime. I was just nodding off when there was a noise and something caught my eye. It was a rat as big as a cat silhoetted in the moonlight as it walked along the window sill. That was the end of sleep for that night.
The Mountain House replacement is quite a tidy little shelter to bed down in these days (even though that's really against the rules), but Mountain House was vandalised right from the early days. A while back I was researching the Sutch Search of 1933, and popped up this quote from The Evening Post on 24th May 1933:
"It seems that some of the huts are too close to civilisation and that they are therefore the prey of a certain type, which, as their contribution to the cost and upkeep of these refuges, insist on doing as much damage as possible.
"As a case in point, I would mention that the first search party which reached the Holdsworth Mountain House (behind Masterton) after midnight on Friday, April 21, was confronted with a shelter bare of axe or firewood, and also unpleasantly cold and draughty owing to structural damage inflicted by vandals. While the party was away next day at the Broken Axe Pinnacles, it was necessary to leave behind a valuable searcher to collect firewood and to endeavour to chop it with a slasher taken up by the party. The same trouble occurs at the huts behind Kaitoke, Otaki and Levin, and when occasionally parties of trampers arrive at these huts in an exhausted condition it is a very serious matter if firewood and axes are missing."
That was a letter from G.B. Wilson, who was the TTC Secretary of the day. I forget hsi first name but I'm sure he was fairly well knwon.
It's funny but I think vandalism is less of a problem than it used to be. Mountain House would be a couple of hours in so you would think it was well away. I think what is happening is that the tramping population is getting older and therefore less likely to vandalise. Modern vandals are less likely to stray far from their cars. The old Green Hut in the Silverpeaks near Dunedin was a good hut when I first visited it in 1968. Then people started knocking the boards out of the bunks to fuel the fire. When the bunks were gone they started on the framing timbers. Eventually the hut fell down.
You might be right. Without having thought it through I'd been thinking that most hut users in the 30s would be at least vaguely associated with the clubs that built the huts. In hindsight, at least in the Tararuas referenced above, these clubs were often trying to promote "tourism" to their region by building the huts to make the area more accessible and safe for the masses, and government tourism budgets were often where the clubs' funding came from, so you'd probably also anticipate lots of users with little or no affiliation with the clubs whatsoever.
I've heard informally (and probably also mentioned it here in the past) that at least some parts of DoC have a 3 hour rule, where they tend to find that anything less than 3 hours from a road is much more likely to be vandalised. From the same source I heard that signposted times are occasionally over-estimated as 3 hours just to dissuade vandalism.
I'm not sure how far in Mountain House was to a road in the 1930s, but it was probably about as close as it is now given they were using it as a search coordination base with a radio station to communicate with Wellington, which was a first.
Oh, I should add that what I just said really only applies to club-built huts, and obviously that's only a minority nationally.
The worst hut that I have seen is Rockburn hut. I have visited it, but haven't had to stay there.
The worst hut that I have heard about is Earnslaw hut. (Kea basin, on the slopes of Mt Earnslaw, above the Dart valley.) There are a few photos and comments on this site, and it is still current on the DOC hut list. Maybe someone has been there recently.
Vandalism certainly seems to be more common on the easier to get at huts. Some of the things I have seen in vehicle accessible huts almost makes me ashamed to admit Im a 4wder as well as tramper.
The other side of the 3 hour rule which although isnt official seems most defiantly to be in use is that it does make planning trips with kids a lot harder.I took a party of scouts to Smiths creek and some struggled. Ended up having to double pack up the puffer due to one cry baby. If he reads this he will know who Im referring too but I doubt he tramps these days. Dobsons would of been a much better destination but the rats ate it
They do bring back memories dont they. Terrible because they where badly situated or vandaliised they still provided shelter of a sort and memories to last years. The old mountain house was bad including the rats. Had a tough night in Bog Inn pureora forest park in the depths of winter before the old fire was replaced some descent rats in there too. cold damp and very smokey.
The Pureora reminds me of Nuffield Lodge which used to be at the old mill site in the Mangakahu Valley at the southern end of the Hauhungaroa Range. It was the old mill manager's house and everything was rotten. I slept in it twice during rain and it was an art finding a space big enough on the floor where the roof didn't leak. One of our party decided to pitch a tent fly outside, attaching one end of the fly to the hut. The weather boards were so rotten that they would pull away when the tension of the fly went on. There was nowhere on the hut strong enough to tie a tent fly to.
One good thing about that hut though was that there was the old grill of a Caterpillar bulldozer lying outside. Build a fire under it and it made the ideal barbeque grill
