Foundations, Past and Future: The Alpine Club of Canada’s Hut System
Editor’s Note: The ACC’s backcountry hut network is core to our identity - the huts represent our commitment to the environment and to the outdoor pursuits of our community. In this piece from Jim Gudjonson (Vice-President for Facilities), he overviews a bit of history on the Abbot Pass Hut and how ACC huts are the way forward for sustainable recreating and for connecting to wild places.
With the reopening of ACC hut bookings, we thought this would be a prudent time to reflect on these wonderful structures - read on!
This article first appeared in the 2019 State of the Mountains Report. We'll continue to publish articles exploring the science on our current state of Canada's alpine on our blog throughout the year. Find them all here.
The Stanley Mitchell Hut. Photo: Leigh McClurg
“As soon as prudence will warrant, huts will be built in remote and strategic locations for the convenience of the members, and persons put in charge for the season… giving comfortable access to all the places already known or yet to be discovered.”
Abbot Pass Hut: Nearly a century in alpine
In only three years, The Alpine Club of Canada’s (ACC) Abbot Pass Hut will be one hundred years old. Consider, if you will, the history that a century holds, and how much history – stories, laughter, memories, friendship, adventure – that’s also then contained by those four stone walls, high on the windswept col between mounts Victoria and Lefroy. The Canadian Pacific Railway’s famous Swiss guides, who built the structure in 1922, could not have predicted that nearly a century later their hut would have not only sheltered generations of mountaineers, but become an iconic symbol of refuge to the mountaineering community.²
“Being the second-highest habitable structure in
Canada, the Abbot Pass Hut has endured many challenges over the past century.”
These same Swiss mountain guides also could not have likely envisioned the climate crisis that is today so rapidly changing our mountain environments, or that the ice melting underneath their iconic shelter, threatening its very existence, is linked to climate warming. In August 2018, a group of observant climbers visiting the hut noticed and reported a “ground failure” on the building’s north side. The slough appeared to be fractured rock, previously cemented in place by permafrost, abutted by a quickly-disappearing glacier: a challenge for our present times.
Being the second-highest habitable structure in Canada, the Abbot Pass Hut has endured many challenges over the past century. The hut was nearly destroyed in 1968 after falling into disrepair, but refurbishment in both 1969 and 1984, and designation as a National Historic Site in 1997, preserved the hut for another generation. Thankfully, due to quick and decisive action from Parks Canada and ACC staff, the most recent crisis has been averted with the stabilization of the hut. Once again, the stone structure will soon provide refuge for climbers.
The Abbot Pass Hut circa 1923. Photo: Glenbow Archives
The largest backcountry hut system in North America
The Abbot Pass Hut is not the only historic hut for weary mountaineers to find shelter, share food and stories, and plot their next day’s adventure. The A.O. Wheeler, Elizabeth Parker, Stanley Mitchell and Conrad Kain huts are all justly celebrated in shared mountain culture and history. They are part of a wider ACC hut system, with thirty-three huts in locations that span the continent, from the Adirondacks to Vancouver Island. It’s the largest backcountry hut system in North America. While the majority of the huts are located in the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains, the recent addition of the Hišimy̓awiƛ Hut, in Pacific Rim National Park, now brings the number up to four in the B.C. coastal zone; and with the Spearhead Huts Project well underway near Whistler, there are a few more world-class facilities on the western horizon. East from the BC coast, the ACC has constructed, acquired, or refurbished three huts over the past four years. The Louise and Richard Guy Hut in Yoho National Park, the Cameron Lakes Shelter in southern Alberta, and the Bon Echo Hut in Ontario are all helping address the growing need for more remote shelters. Attendance rates in ACC huts has increased thirty-three per cent over the past four years – a ringing endorsement for our facilities, but also a strong sign that mountain culture and recreation is thriving across the country
The Abbot Pass Hut in September 2018 showing remediation efforts underway. Photo: Tetra Tech Inc.
Focusing on preserving our mountain spaces
With expansion, though, comes the need to carefully consider our impacts on the sensitive alpine and sub-alpine ecosystems, and recognize that the alpine – even in the remotest of settings – is always a shared space. For example, the Louise and Richard Guy Hut, built in 2015 to a very high efficiency and sustainability standard, highlights the Club’s commitment to environmental stewardship and the overarching ethos of its member - ship. Located high above treeline on the western side of the Wapta Icefield, the small ski hut incorporates many state-of-the-art technologies intended to reduce its carbon footprint and increase the longevity of the facility. However, usage is restricted to only the winter months. Just south of the Guy Hut is sensitive habitat for grizzly bears. Always in close consultation with our proud partner, Parks Canada, the ACC thus closes this particular facility between May and November.
The Louise and Richard Guy Hut at Mont des Poilus. Photo: Eric Petersen
Preserving and cultivating our connection to our wild mountain spaces is a duty the ACC takes seriously – and it’s important work. Aldo Leopold, the great American ecologist and conservationist, speaking of the cabin in The Abbot Pass Hut circa 1923. Photo: Glenbow Archives The Abbot Pass Hut in September 2018 showing remediation efforts underway. Photo: Tetra Tech Inc. which he and his family sought refuge “from too much modernity,” described the labour involved in its preservation: “On this sand farm in Wisconsin, first worn-out and then abandoned by our bigger-and-better society, we try to rebuild, with shovel and axe, what we are losing elsewhere. It is here that we seek – and still find – our meat from God.”³ This “meat from God,” or the connection to our wild homes, in which so many discover solace and wholeness, is linked to creating and preserving spaces that allow this discovery. “When we see land as a community to which we belong,” Leopold continues, “we may begin to use it with love and respect.”⁴
The ACC hut system is an example of this transformative process: stewardship values have developed over generations through Club members’ connection with the mountain environment, in turn affect how we develop and maintain our facilities in these places that we are connected to. The Alpine Club of Canada will continue to incorporate more than a hundred years’ worth of connection to the mountains in decisions that will affect generations of mountaineers to come.
Jim Gudjonson is the Vice President for Facilities of The Alpine Club of Canada, as well as the Director of Environment and Sustainability at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. He is an accredited ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide.
References
1. Parker, E. The Alpine Club of Canada. Canadian Alpine Journal 1, 5-6 (1907).
2. Kariel, H and P. Alpine Huts in the Rockies, Selkirks, and Purcells. 13-16 (The Alpine Club of Canada, 1986); Robinson, Z and Slemon, S. Hard time in the Canadian Pacific Rockies. Canadian Rockies Annual 1, 64-73 (2016).
3. Leopold, A. Foreword, A Sand Country Almanac: And Sketches Here and There, viii (1949).
4. Ibid.