There’s changes afoot at Ruapehu Hut on Delta Corner and whispers of a resident ghost. I received this report on the Ruapehu Hut working bee of 23-25 March 2007 run by the Akld and CNI sections, and on which some Wgtn section members assisted: “We had a very successful weekend. Thanks to all the volunteers who came and dedicated their time to helping out. There are still a number of jobs to finish, but we made a great start! He is an account of how the weekend progressed. There were 9 people in total. On Friday, we managed to get all the final materials up to the hut – the bulk had arrived by chopper earlier in the week. We did a shuttle relay of 6 trips from the chairlift to Delta corner, and then from Delta corner up to the hut. We were quite proud of getting everything up there, when we realized we’d left the box of beers and one bag of tools down at the end of the Centennial Chairlift. We managed to get back for them before the Lifty thought he’d got away with a good Friday night score! Once the materials and tools were all up there, we took the entrance door off and started ripping up the old floor. By sundown Friday, we had managed to make good progress. We all turned in relatively early, as we knew it would be an early start. We were expecting a couple of others to stumble in quite late, but they ended up coming up first thing in the morning. However, the night was eventful, and I will digress a bit. Does anyone know of any rumours of the Ruapehu Hut having a ghost or being haunted? We have 4 witnesses this weekend of ghostly happenings this night, so I would be interested to know if anyone else knows of anything. And no, we were not plastered (we were on rations!), so that couldn’t be an excuse! That night, I got up about 1:30, so it was after this. I was aware of coming around, and being aware of someone climbing the bunks. I was sleeping second tier, with the ladder at my feet, but the movement was past my head, and I could feel the vibration of someone climbing. I thought it was Dave, but then realized he was sleeping below me. Then I thought it might be Brad, cause he was in the back corner. I didn’t hear any further noise, no rustling of sleeping bags, which you would expect if someone had arrived late and was settling in. It wasn’t until the next morning that all the other stories came out. After Brad got up, he went looking in the entrance loft, and came back in and said, “where’s the others?”. In the night, he had seen in the doorway, a person all covered up in winter gear, in an orangy beany, and thought “someone’s turned up late”. He didn’t click at the time that the light in the entrance way was left on all night, so it would have shone through the door. He also didn’t hear the door go. (And the door is quite noisy when you get up to go toilet!). He didn’t see where the figure went to, just that there was someone in the doorway. Ron woke up to hear the bang-bang of heavy feet on the entrance grill, as if someone was banging their boots off. Rosemary was same as me – heard movement going on, and felt the movements of the bunks. Dave doesn’t admit to anything. He did hear someone getting up, but it may have been me. It wasn’t til after hearing all the stories that I tried climbing that post to get to the top bunk – it was bloody hard work, but I could do it, (and almost near impossible if you are not a climber) and I remembered it being pretty a swift movement in the night. And it wasn’t until I was working on the entrance grill the next day, I tried making the sound that Ron had heard – my medium tramping boots couldn’t replicate the sound that the grill had made – the sound in the night was more like it came from Plastics. Anyways, all interesting! We may have started a tourist attraction. Good way of raising funds! I was beginning to wonder if after ripping the hut apart, we released bad karma, and we didn’t do a blessing on the hut prior!! What have we started?! No encounters on the Saturday night, though! Anyways, Saturday brought excellent weather. We were at the grindstone by 7 am. Good alpine start! Most of Saturday was trying to get the old floor up, renogged out, and we got most of the underfloor insulation done. As well, we had repaired and sealed all major holes in the cladding. The door was remade by the end of Saturday and coated with a coat of etch-primer. We managed to get all the mortaring done of the holes in the foundation blocks by the end of Saturday. We pushed on to 8:30, as we wanted to get the plywood all down before we stopped, as we knew the checkerplate would take the full day. As it was, one of the sheets of ply wasn’t level, and we needed to take it up, so we just decided to wait til morning. Besides, the beer and wine were calling! A couple of others spent a good amount of Saturday cleaning up the paintwork and scraping off all the flaking paint on the eastern walls (they continued this work on Sunday to the other walls). Also, on Saturday, we wondered why there were lots of blow flies, so we investigated. About 40m north of the hut, there was a big black cloud, low to the ground, which was blowflies, like bees around a honey pot – but these were flies around effluent, as we found the septic tank was obviously seeping….thanks to Brad for coming up with the new technique of killing flies. We will all be looking out for the new electrifying fly swat – apparently can be found at Warehouse! Sunday was another great weather day and very productive. Again, early start by 6:30 am, to sort out the uneven plywood prior to breakfast. I was sorting out the rehanging of the door – the existing door had a warp, so it was a struggle, and there was a lot of modifying of the framework to get it to fit. At the same time, the checkerplate was going down as a dry run, and cutting it to size. Before we knew it, it was lunch time, and we knew our deadline was to get the last chairlift down by 4:00! We spent the aftern
