With the successful completion of the Himmelsbach Hut in 1968, the British Columbia Mountaineering Club (BCMC) began looking for another location to build a Gothic arch hut near Whistler. They already had a couple of ideas for their next location; one was near Mt. Trorrey along the Spearhead Traverse, the other was an alpine meadow on Mount Brew. The BCMC decided to ask the mountaineering community for suggestions and advertised through a mountaineering paper and a few leaflets.
Werner Himmelsbach recalled, “So this logger, he contacted me and said, ‘I hiked up the peak beside Wedge Mountain and I saw a nice lake don below,’ so I thought that would be a place.”
Werner, along with three other BCMC members, decided to hike up Wedge in hopes of finding the lake the logger mentioned. “It took us five and a half hours to get up there because we got lost in there because it was bush.”
This exploration of Wedge also involved finding a way across the river as there was no bridge access. “Wedgemount Lake… was beautiful and when you come over the rise… there is this lake, turquoise colour and the glacier right into the lake,” Werner reminisced.
The BCMC held a meeting to decide the new location and the vote was decidedly in favour of building the hut near Wedgemount Lake. At Mount Brew, as mentioned in a previous article in The Whistler Question, the UBC Varsity Outdoor Club would later struggle with their own Gothic arch huts in the 1980s and the Spearhead Traverse would be revisited in the future by the BCMC.
The BCMC was granted building permission by BC Parks on October 9, 1970 and quickly organized a work party to construct the hut over the Thanksgiving weekend. Werner was away on a trip to the Kootenays, so “master-builder” Manfred was in charge of putting the hut together. The majority of the hut was built on the Saturday and the finishing touches and aluminum siding were added on Sunday. The outhouse was built on the Monday but no trench was dug because the snow had already started to fall.
Brian Wood, a BCMC member and former President of the Federation of Mountain Clubs of British Columbia, recalled the BCMC assembled a work crew to go back to Wedgemount Lake to complete the construction of the hut in 1971. When the crew arrived wind and snow creep had pushed the hut off of its foundations. The crew used fallen logs to help maneuver the hut back into place and attached a couple of guy wires to help keep the hut on its foundations. The crew dug the pit for the outhouse and the hut was ready to officially open that summer.
The Wedgemount Lake Hut remains a popular destination for hikers, rock-climbers and ski mountaineers to this day. Because the hut only accommodates eight people. BC Parks has build camping spots and a bear cache nearby. Reservations are required to camp or use the hut year-round. If you’re interested in heading out, visit the BC Parks website for more details.