Trail Talk
Well-known member
It was a hard offer to resist. We've been volunteer hut custodians with the Alpine Club of Canada for decades and when the call went out recently for a crew to clean and inventory the historic A.O. Wheeler Alpine Hut at Glacier National Park near Rogers Pass in British Columbia, we found it irresistible. What attracted us was knowing that we would have the entire hut, and the adjoining Illecillewaet campground, to ourselves since the area was under a closure order due to tree-felling operations. So, armed with a special permit and the gate key, we drove up a steep service road and parked BLITZEN beside the hut to serve as our base camp.
A couple of days of hard work went by quickly. Persistent rain kept us indoors regardless, so scraping up pine marten droppings and washing down everything with bleach solution was a good use of time. When the sun finally came out, we hurriedly considered which of several hikes to undertake. Our choice was made when we spotted a grizzly snuffling around the trailhead to the high alpine, so we took the low road and enjoyed a bit of archaeology by tracing the old railway line that ran past the ruins of Glacier House hotel and onwards to the Loop Brook railway trestle which formed a huge figure eight for the train to gradually gain elevation towards Kicking Horse Pass. The loop became unnecessary with the construction of the Connaught Tunnel and was abandoned in 1917, also dropping the line to Glacier House.
Opened as a luxury hotel by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886, Glacier House was staffed by imported Swiss guides and soon became the centre of Canadian alpinism. Unfortunately the hotel struggled without its railway access. The doors finally closed in 1926 and it was torn down in 1929. In 1946 the Alpine Club of Canada opened a much smaller and less grand, but equally welcoming A.O. Wheeler Hut.
Soon enough our time at the Wheeler Hut was over and we heading back home with an overnight stop at Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site. Worth a visit, especially if you enjoy the history of the fur trade. This site beside the Brierly Rapids marked the upper reaches of the voyageur's canoe travel on the North Saskatchewan River. Here were built in 1799 competing trading posts for both the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company. While not much of their presence remains, excepting two chimney's from the last Hudson's Bay fort abandoned in 1875, as a canoeist it was easy to imagine being on the river and rejoicing at the site of its wooden stockades.
