Edmonton Section Huts – We built our own in the early years

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 to reach camp. Mountain trips were not frequent, so Edmonton built local huts to accommodate year round outdoor and social activities for members. Edmonton’s first hut “the Eyrie” was built by members in Quesnell Heights, on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, about 5 kilometers outside of the city at that time. The opening celebrations of February 27, 1926, included “The Song of the Edmonton Section,” written by Cyril G. Wates.

In 1932 the club constructed a larger hut on Whitemud Creek, on the south side of the North Saskatchewan River. A highlight was a stone fireplace featuring a Burgess Shale trilobite fossil, constructed by Dr. H.E. Bulyea. The hut hosted Christmas parties and suppers and sing-alongs, and was used to entertain visiting alpine club members. Skiers used the slopes down to the river as ski runs in the winter. Edmonton Ski Club and Voyageurs Canoe Club members sometimes joined in. As Don Campbell, who joined the club in 1937 at age 16, wrote, “In those days, the membership including associates numbered approximately fifty, with men and women being equally divided. Weekly hikes were held in the spring and fall, for fitness training and sociability. During the winter, weekly excursions were made to our hut near the mouth of the Whitemud Creek to ski on our ski hill. And, of course, the highlight of the year was the last two weeks of July, when the ACC’s annual camp was held somewhere in the Rockies or Columbias.” The Whitemud hut was overtaken by urban growth by the 1960s.

A two lane paved road to Jasper eased travel and spurred interest in a section hut near Roche Miette. In 1935 a group led by Rex Gibson identified a site and proposed rebuilding a stone house inside the eastern border of Jasper National Park, near the current Miette warden cabin. An Edmonton work party started the build, and soon refined and expanded the hut, partially funded through a bequest from C.R. Cross. The Disaster Point Hut was a success, as Helen Burns described in the 1940 Canadian Alpine Journal. The hut had screened verandas, a lean-to kitchen, and a stone fireplace built by Dr. H.E. Bulyea as a memorial to his son, who was lost following an avalanche accident in January 1937. The hut was used by many ACC members as a base for expeditions, training, and group camping. Barbara Campbell, ACC life member, described arriving at the hut in the evening as a child: “I sometimes slept on the screened-in porch. I would peek out of my old army mummy bag at the twinkling stars, the moon shimmering on the Athabasca River, and hear the mournful train whistle from across the valley.” Stories were also told of inquisitive pack rats causing sleepers to shout and suddenly levitate in their sleeping bags. After years of expeditions and family trips the hut fell out of use by the 1970s and was in disrepair. The section raised funds for replacement or renovation of the hut. Planning began for an alternate site farther from the highway, as required by Jasper National Park, up Miette Hot Springs Road. After protracted negotiations, insufficient water on the Miette site and a preference for high altitude huts doomed a replacement. The original stone walls and chimney were initially preserved as a historic site but were knocked down for safety by parks staff in 1985.

A more complete story of the Disaster Point Hut was written by Cyril Shokoples for an ACC Edmonton Section Centennial publication in 2012. Although the publication did not come to fruition, the articles written for it are too interesting not to share. Please read more here: The Disaster Point Hut, 1935-1985.

Edmonton was also instrumental in building and maintaining the Wates-Gibson Hut in Tonquin Valley, which is named after Edmonton members Cyril G. Wates and Rex Gibson. George Stefanick applied his civil engineering background to siting the new Wates-Gibson Hut in 1961. He also introduced ski touring on light gear to the Edmonton section on a run into the hut in 1973. Edmontonians frequented the hut and ran ski touring and mountaineering camps there for decades, the last in 2009. The annual Thanksgiving Weekend Hut Maintenance Work Party, initiated by Stefanick, was carried on by Rick Checkland for thirty years, until interrupted by Covid-19 closures. After a thorough deep clean of the hut the work party would enjoy the generous turkey dinner complete with all the fixings that they had carried in.

As an example of some of the work led by Edmonton, a report by Elaine Moase in the September 1989 Breeze described Wates-Gibson Renovations, Week II, March 1989 as construction work framed by ski runs. “For the ski-in, we had perfect weather, sunshine and warm temperatures… As Fred and Brian wrestled with the new kitchen door, Eva and Philippe framed the kitchen porch…and all the windows dug out so the new shutters could be hung… the new front porch went up while inside the two new dining tables were put together and varathaned. Everyone worked steadily on the time-consuming jobs, like insulating, putting cedar siding on the porches, and varathaning window sills. As we worked, it snowed gently, and the hills beckoned… Thursday afternoon five of us… skied up Ada Boulevard to Amethyst Lake… [After] securing the remaining materials for the fall workcrew the front yard of the cabin was transformed from a construction site to a clearing in the forest once again. And then we headed out skiing for half the afternoon, scattering to the four points of the compass in one last rush for snow time… Many thanks to George Stefanik and Bob Nicoll for organizing the hut renovations…” (The full report is below.)

Photos by Don Campbell, courtesy of Barbara Campbell.