It's taken years to finally arrange a visit to the Bugaboos but it finally happened this week. An ACC work crew was to visit the Conrad Kain Hut in late September to winterize the place. This was the opportunity to make a brief visit.
I managed to convince my regular scrambling/hiking partner that she would find the trip interesting, so we headed up over Gray Pass to Kimberley, up the Columbia valley to Brisco, drove 50 km up the Bugaboo Creek FSR, camped in the truck overnight and made ourselves ready for the helicopter and the day's work. All this to get to a place that is only about 100 km from our house, if only we could travel as crows do....
The rest of the crew and the helicopter arrived around 10 am, two groups were flown into the Hut and then the job of ferrying out the full biffy barrels, in with the clean barrels and the rest of the gear. This day, Tuesday, had perhaps the best weather of the trip, as it snowed and fogged most of the rest of the time.
Catherine and I took the opportunity right away to hike up to one of the campgrounds located about 30 minutes uphill from the Hut, with great views of Snowpatch, Bugaboo Spire, Crescent Spires and Eastpost Spire. All impressive granite spires rising nearly vertically from the surrounding glaciers.
We spent about 2 days taking apart the water turbine, cleaning, installing shutters on windows and trying to keep warm. Thursday morning we finished up and hiked out, taking under 2 hours to make it to the parking lot. This gave us lots of time to make the long trip south, around via Cranbrook and Creston and back home.
Pictures are at: http://picasaweb.google.ca/dave.mcc51/TheBugaboosWinterizingTheKainHut#
I managed to convince my regular scrambling/hiking partner that she would find the trip interesting, so we headed up over Gray Pass to Kimberley, up the Columbia valley to Brisco, drove 50 km up the Bugaboo Creek FSR, camped in the truck overnight and made ourselves ready for the helicopter and the day's work. All this to get to a place that is only about 100 km from our house, if only we could travel as crows do....
The rest of the crew and the helicopter arrived around 10 am, two groups were flown into the Hut and then the job of ferrying out the full biffy barrels, in with the clean barrels and the rest of the gear. This day, Tuesday, had perhaps the best weather of the trip, as it snowed and fogged most of the rest of the time.
Catherine and I took the opportunity right away to hike up to one of the campgrounds located about 30 minutes uphill from the Hut, with great views of Snowpatch, Bugaboo Spire, Crescent Spires and Eastpost Spire. All impressive granite spires rising nearly vertically from the surrounding glaciers.
We spent about 2 days taking apart the water turbine, cleaning, installing shutters on windows and trying to keep warm. Thursday morning we finished up and hiked out, taking under 2 hours to make it to the parking lot. This gave us lots of time to make the long trip south, around via Cranbrook and Creston and back home.
Pictures are at: http://picasaweb.google.ca/dave.mcc51/TheBugaboosWinterizingTheKainHut#
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