A community of alpine enthusiasts, sharing base camp in Edmonton.

“Artist, sculptor, photographer and lover of nature as well as an outstanding dentist.” Edmonton Journal, May 7th, 1942. I first learned of Dr. H. E. Bulyea as a Masters student. I was searching for traces of the University of Alberta (U of A) Varsity Ski Club at the U of A Archives, and came across several photos taken by Dr. Bulyea that depicted university life during the early 1900s. These photos were invaluable to my Read more

Today the Alpine Club of Canada operates almost three dozen back country huts, with half a dozen built and run by individual sections. Edmonton also has a history of building its own huts, once including a hut at the east edge of Jasper National Park. In the early days of the club, travel to the mountains was a major process, involving the train or dirt roads to get to Jasper, and pack horses and hiking Read more

In the mid 1970s, I attended the ACC Edmonton Section’s “Summer in the Mountains” course, which included a series of weekend outings to Jasper National Park. A large group of ACC instructors and students used the Disaster Point Hut as a stepping-off point for our forays on rock, snow, and ice. Most participants chose to stay in tents or the veranda of the hut in preference to doing battle with the resident packrats, who had Read more