Hut Spot
A charming cottage in Glacier National Park makes a splendid budget family vacation for four. Who cares that there’s
no electricity or running water when civilization is just a 20-minute ski away?
By Lisa Gregoire with photography by Patrice Halley
Snow slumps down the rock faces of Rogers Pass, B.C., like freshly flung meringue. Hemmed
in by roadside snowbanks three metres high, the Trans-Canada Highway feels like a giant bobsled
run. My husband Dan and I have been planning this family trip with our twin girls for weeks,
stuffing backpacks to see what fits. (Slippers, yes. Plastic tambourine, no.) So here we
are, with food and fleece for four about to be hoisted on our backs and a stroller on skis
where our toddlers will soon spar with words and elbows. The Selkirk Mountains of Glacier
National Park beckon me in a muffled yodel. I’m feeling very Shackleton. But right
now, I’m just shackled. The minivan’s tires are spinning in knee-deep unplowed
snow in the trailhead parking lot. This alpine adventure is going to be swell, once we park
the damn van.
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Photographer Patrice Halley suggests we wedge floor mats behind the tires for traction.
Clever. I jump behind the wheel to inch us back and forth while Dan and Halley push the van
and shout to the girls to stay back. Halley says, “Don’t rev it too high” and “Put
it in low gear,” and I’m thinking, “Back off. My dad taught soldiers how
to drive in the army. And he taught me.” Just as I’m stewing about how men insist
on telling me how to drive and shoot pool, the wheels find purchase and the van fishtails
into place. We are heading to a hut in avalanche country with no electricity or running water,
and this is not the intrepid launch I had imagined. But I don’t scare easily. I’m
a mother of twins.
The trip thus far had been painless. We had interrupted our seven-hour drive from Edmonton
to Rogers Pass with an overnight in Banff, but after luxuriating in the Douglas Fir Resort & Chalets
hot tub — right next to the kiddie pool — we had considered skipping the hut
altogether. I awoke the next morning at 7:00 to a rubber dinosaur hopping across my face. “Pinky
is an ankylosaurus, Mom,” said Daisy. “Jump, jump, jump.”
With a double-shot Americano, a dry highway unfolding toward British Columbia and the three-year-olds
behind us in the van murmuring about “big mountains,” I found myself considering
our vacation evolution. Camping with babies had lost its charm three years ago: mosquitoes,
sleep deprivation, rain and two sets of diapers exceeded the limits of our small tent and
my even smaller patience. Long, leisurely road trips got shorter and less leisurely, sewn
together, as they were, between small-town playgrounds and public washrooms. But the girls
matured, and so did we — it was time to ease back into nature. The Alpine Club of Canada’s
A. O. Wheeler Hut supplied the ease. Halfway between Revelstoke and Golden, B.C., the 61-year-old
log cabin, which sleeps 24 in winter, is just two kilometres from the parking lot. Should
fevers, gaping wounds or unrelenting tantrums (my own) afflict us, escape was a 20-minute
ski away.
With the van finally parked and my pride restored, we don backpacks and pull the stroller
to the top of a small, steep hill. Once there, we ply the short, flat trail to Wheeler on
cross-country skis. The ridge, which gets about nine metres of snow annually, is contourless
and mute. Two army detachments from CFB Shilo, Man., are stationed at Rogers Pass every winter
to fire 105mm howitzers high up into known avalanche paths, minimizing massive natural slides,
which can close the highway and railway for days. While pondering what spooks me more — extreme
avalanche conditions or the presence of cannons — we arrive at a large white hump with
a chimney and realize it’s our hut. Thus begins roughly 48 hours of the best wilderness
water fetching, fire stoking, outhouse frequenting, hand sanitizing, oatmeal cooking, nose
blowing, tea sipping and snowball launching I’ve ever engaged in.
The girls have been snowman-deprived in Edmonton, where the snow’s usually dry and
powdery. Not here. Rolling a snowball is like rolling up sod. Daisy’s been begging
for a snow bunny, so after considerable unpacking, we pick a spot and begin construction.
Roll, roll, pat, pat. Wet snow is heavy, I discover, struggling to lift the abdomen and head,
but the ears prove the trickiest. I finally jam them onto the head at unnatural angles. Perfect,
I think, awash in sweat and triumph. “That doesn’t look like a bunny,” pouts
Daisy.
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