You’re never too old for LEGO building! Our annual Big Kids LEGO Building Competition is back on Tuesday, December 5. This year’s theme is “Build Your Dream Backcountry Hut (or Campsite)”, so start thinking about what you’d like to see in your own hut!
There are only 25 spots for competitors so preregistration is encouraged. You can drop by the Museum to reserve your spot or give us a call at 604-932-2019. Building begins at 6:30 pm and spectators are encouraged! Registration is $10 and includes 1 drink ticket. 19+.
Following the student referendum in 1980 that awarded the UBC-VOC $30,000 for the materials used to construct the Club Cabin, the VOC decided to purchase two pre-fabricated Gothic arch huts built by a construction company in Richmond.
After two years of negotiations with the Provincial Government, the VOC was granted permission to build a hut on Mount Brew. The Club decided to use the first of the pre-fabricated huts they had purchased on this site. The hut was built over two weekends in September 1982.
Flying in materials by helicopter for Brew Hut Construction, September 1982. Photo: Alan Dibb; UBC-VOC Archives.
Jay Page, a former president of the VOC, wrote, “Up on the mountain a lean-to shelter is nailed together as it begins to rain and storm. The cabin site is picked out by flashlight that night amid the piles of lumber.”
After the fanfare of the construction of the Brew Hut, Club members neglected to visit the hut for a few months. Upon a visit in late February 1983, Club members noted that the hut was located in a high snow accumulation zone. This raised alarm bells within the VOC as the last hut they had built on the Garibaldi Neve Traverse (named the Neve Hilton) had been completely destroyed by snow creep and accumulation.
The Brew Hut under construction, 1982. Photo: Jay Page; UBC-VOC Archives.
Over the next few months and into May 1983, members of the Club returned almost weekly to keep the Brew Hut structure free of the heavy wet snow customarily found in the Coast Mountains. Each time they returned they found more snow had fallen than in the months previous. The hut structure had sustained damage and the wood was beginning to crack.
Members of the VOC decided the solution would be to move the hut to a new location via a large helicopter. By the time this solution had been arranged, however, snow had begun to fall. The Club decided to dismantle the hut and build it in a new location the following year.
Brew Hut II under construction, 1984 (it would seem the Brew Hut was always under construction). Photo: UBC-VOC Archives.
In the fall of 1984 a new site was chosen for the hut on a ridgeline to the west of the old Brew Hut location. The hut was rebuilt with a few modifications. One of the changes was to make the hut smaller as some of the arches had been damaged by the weight of the snow the previous year. This helped the hut retain more heat. Snow fell again, disrupting the completion of the hut until the following year. The Brew Hut in its new location opened in 1985 and was renamed Brew Hut II.
Stay tuned next week for more on the challenges face by Brew Hut II.
For almost 50 years the Himmelsbach Hut has sat perched near Russet Lake at the head of Singing Pass. The hut was built by the British Columbia Mountaineering Club (BCMC) and named after carpenter and long-time Whistler local Werner Himmelsbach.
Construction of the hut was scheduled in September 1967. Dick Chambers, a member of the construction party, remembered being flown to Whistler by Helijet at the time (for more about Dick Chambers, check here).
Materials for the Himmelsbach Hut, as well as workers, were flown in by helicopter. Photo: Chambers Collection
“The stuff was all in the parking lot – the old Whistler parking lot. Blackcomb wasn’t developed then, it was still a garbage dump… so we land at the parking lot and the Park Ranger was there, waiting to organize this stuff, and so he flew me in, and the next morning I waited and waited and nothing was happening,” Chambers recalled.
The helicopter carrying a load of material to the site had lost it somewhere on the northeastern side of the peak of Whistler, across from Blackcomb. The load had not been properly attached and triggered the release mechanism.
“Eventually we recovered that load of stuff by looking in the bush and it wound up at Werner Himmelsbach’s hut covering his firewood because it wasn’t good for anything, you know, it was beaten up,” Chambers said.
By the time the Club was able to rebuild the lost materials, snowstorms had started and members of the construction party decided to pack it up and store it until the following year.
The Himmelsbach Hut under construction. Photo: Chambers Collection
In August 1968 the Himmelsbach Hut was was built over a period of three days and began the busiest three-years of hut construction by the BCMC in its history. Other huts built by the club include Wedgemount Lake Hut loacted north of Blackcomb, Pummer Hut on Claw Ridge near the Tellot Glacier and Mountain Waddington, and Mountain Lake Hut that sits east of Brittania Beach.
Along with the huts built by the Club, Werner Himmelsbach lent his laminating jig and expertise to the University of British Columbia’s Varsity Outdoor Club. The VOC, led by Roland Burton, built a gothic-arch hut near the Sphinx Glacier in Garibaldi Provincial Park. Years later, he assisted the Alpine Club of Canada Whistler Section in the construction of the Wendy Thompson Hut, located in the Marriott Basin.
The Himmelsbach Hut today. Photo: Spencer Jespersen
Over the past several months, I have been tasked with writing, researching and designing a virtual museum exhibit on the Coast Mountain Gothic Arch Alpine Huts for the Whistler Museum (for more on the virtual exhibit click here). Once the exhibit is complete, the virtual exhibit will be hosted on the Virtual Museum of CanadaCommunity Memories website and will tell the complete story of these iconic structures. Look for the release of the virtual exhibit in Winter 2018.
