Asulkan Pass for 24 hours

One of my volunteer activities is with the Alpine Club and their hut maintenance projects. The past 2 days were spent in the Rogers Pass area at the Asulkan Hut, which is about a kilometer above Rogers Pass at the edge of the Asulkan Glacier. This is a decent summer hiking objective with numerous mountaineering opportunities in the area and a prime backcountry skiing destination in the winter. The Asulkan Hut was/is owned by Parks Canada, but the entire operation of the hut has been taken over by the ACC, hence this trip.

This trip was for the regular hut maintenance operations and also have a small volunteer group stain the hut, do some cleaning and carry out some other painting. Our group included one ACC staff person and 6 volunteers. After the helicopter carried up the season's propane tanks and finished some other duties, we were all flown up with our equipment. This was Thursday, with blue skies, warm temperatures and great views on the way up.

With the good weather, we set about the staining project right away and nearly had the hut completed by supper time. While we waited for supper to cook, we made a quick hike up to Asulkan Pass for the views over the other side. Skies were really black to the south and when we heard the thunder, we picked up the pace a bit, making it back to the hut before the storm hit.

It rained, blew and snowed most of the night, and the morning presented us with low cloud, fog and no view much beyond the nearest snowdrift. After a couple of hours of cleaning, I packed up and headed down the trail because I had to be home by supper. The others were staying until Saturday to finish some painting and other jobs. The snow at that elevation made for easy and quick downhill hiking, but one bridge was out at the bottom of the moraine. Fortunately there was a good snow bridge over one raging stream. Once I tip-toed over that, the rest of the hike out was quite decent, although there was lots of old avalanche debris - bits of trees, snow - for some distance.

By the time I got home, the sun was out.