Godley Hut

Members of the South Canterbury Branch of the New Zealand Alpine Club recently spent the weekend up at Godley Hut with the purpose of putting a third coat of paint on the exterior. 

Surveying the scene before the walk in.

Although a public road from Lilybank, the track is through and across numerous stretches of water and bumps over boulders where parts have been washed out. A great job driving by Rob with Gary navigating the 30 km to the "parking lot" in 3 hours. Another hour's walk gets to the hut around the corner at the right.

The Maud Glacier with terminal face (centre photograph) in the lake.

The hut used to be green but had been given a coat of its original (or as close too) orange colour. A second coat of paint was done in about 2 hours on a warm bright sunny Saturday afternoon." Many hands make light work."

Gary and Rob roped up, paint brushes in hand.

Godley Hut after a fresh coat of paint

Godley Hut with its rock foundations.

The is at an altitude over 1,100m in heavily glaciated area. The views and rock layers are worth the effort to get there. After finishing the painting we had a few hours to explore and walk up the Godley River to another glacial lake on Sunday morning.

Time for a brew after finishing the painting and other tasks.

Photos in the hut book show a different picture in 1972 with ice filling the area in front of where this photo was taken.

Moraine left behind and a glacier just hanging on.

The layers of sedimentary rocks are most greywacke and argillite.  Greywacke of a very hard compacted sandstone whilst argillite is a mudstone which splits more easily. When these layers of sediment were laid down over several hundred million years they were in horizontal parallel layers. Earth movements have uplifted, tilted and twisted the rock layers as the Southern Alps were formed. The evidence is very clearly seen here.

Mt Moffat, 2638m with its hanging glacier

Shattering layers of rocks tilted to vertical.

A closer view with a chaotic pile of rubble.

A coarse grained sandstone showing signs of high compression.

Highly contorted argillitic mudstone.

A quick walk on Sunday morning saw us at the terminal lake of the Godley Glacier. This lake was not here in 1972!!!

Lake Godley. This is as far was we could go.
The lake goes around to the right to the terminal face.

It was time to go back to the hut, put the billy on then tidy up for the long trek out and down the river valley and home nearly 6 hours later. Thanks to the Alpine Club for including me as "official photographer and assistant painter".

Lake Grey on the way back on Sunday.