Last weekend I climbed St Paul's Dome in the Fingal Valley. It was a cracker of a day, and we had plenty of time, so we decided to continue on down the western ridge of the Dome toward Mt St Peter. It was pretty broken country, prickly scrub but not too thick, lots of boulders and small cliff lines to negotiate, but not difficult. Several hundred meters down the ridge we came across.....a small glass pane. Unbroken, standing almost upright, carefully set in a plinth of small stones. It was perfectly clear, and had bevelled edges, such as you might see in a cabinet or door glass. Definitely not a mirror. No sign of a frame. Nothing else there. Although a bit hard to tell it looked like it had been then for a while. You could see down to the Fingal Valley, and the pane was angled - slightly - down in that direction.
Why would someone go to that trouble? Why in that spot? For what?
One mystery is good.
Two is definitely.....something's up.
So a friend pointed out that someone else had recently come across a glass pane, unbroken, standing up, in a remarkably similar location (i.e. high on mountain, but well away from normal routes) in the Western Tiers.
What is going on?
An elaborate prank? Then why sooooooo far out of the way?
Someone testing a range-finder? Then why not a mirror, and why such an odd location?
Someone enlighten me.
But don't bother with conspiracy theories.
- SPD 7 July 2024
