Home > Trip Reports > February break at Wendy Thompson hut, BC

February break at Wendy Thompson hut, BC

2/15/17
Canada BC
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Posted by kamtron on 3/11/17 7:48am
Spent a five-star last week of February at Wendy Thompson hut in Marriott basin. This is N of the Duffey Lake road, between Pemberton and Lillooet. I hope you enjoy my little story.

What we wish we knew
The hut is basic. We were informed there would be no running water available, limited firewood, and possibly missing cookware. Only the firewood part was true. There was enough, but I imagine it's gone for the season now. They have trouble keeping people from hogging it and burning it all. In their defense, the fireplace didn't seem to put off much heat without the door being open or a raging fire inside. So we ended up hauling in way too much fuel and some extra items. Also, the ACC Whistler folks who are your contacts aren't very good about responding to email.

Photo dump
(Pics by Cody Lourie, Will Sumner, and me)
Beautiful days, every day.
Skiing into 7 Mile basin
Stoked on powder in 7 Mile basin, one of many laps on this SE aspect. Lots of sledders seem to use this valley, and they were respectful of us
Hut living
Our party of 9 leaving the hut together

Lots of good moderate terrain around the hut, but opportunities to get rad abound.
Those pillows are quite large and guarded by a very corniced ridge.
Snowboarders know how to get rad

Skiing into our one near-whiteout returning to the hut day 3
For our last full day we chose to ski Cayoosh, one valley over.
We toured up the whiteout run from the day before, where we'd put in the skintrack already, and topped out on Exidor bowl. (Mt. Marriott in distance)

To get to Cayoosh creek we dropped a nice tube, one away from "Rock and Roll". This SE aspect still had really good snow after lots of sunshine, but it got crusty towards the bottom.

We skied from the summit onto the N glacier of Cayoosh. Swivel Rocker (center of Cayoosh photo) would've been dope, but we botched the entrance and settled for the glacier. It was super-deep and super-good. We had a track to guide us from a solo Austrian dude who we'd watch ski it 2 days before.

On the last day, we packed up and did short laps by the hut. You can see some of the mellow terrain behind.

The Hut Spine Wall, 20 minutes from your front door

We spent 1 night in Mount Currie at a decent motel, and gorged on good food in Pemberton. But it wasn't enough, we wanted more pow.
The objective for Saturday was suggested by some locals as a "straightforward half-day classic": Heartstrings
He was a sandbagger, but the views of the Joffre group and across the road to our Marriott haunts were killer

Heartstrings is a line with a very unlikely entrance through big cliffs.
It offers spectacular position as you ski through these cliffs. Snow was pretty good in the top bit, but the run overall is lower, and we finished off the trip skiing through some solid crust. It was just the thing to finish off the trip!

We met Meira in Whistler that afternoon, where she'd opted for a spa day at the Scandinave. Probably a good choice!

It was a spectacular trip. We were granted near-perfect weather and snow conditions. Nice boot-top powder and stability, although there were just enough wind slabs lurking at ridgetops to keep of from green light conditions.

Our company was great. I learned from Gregg_C the golden rule of hut trips: strive for 1:1 gender ratio. That is the key to fun times, rather than a bunch of bros sitting around staring at maps and grunting about how rad to get tomorrow. The only bummer was that Dave, our 10th member, feeling strong and breaking trail the whole way in on day 1, came down with the flu the next day and spent the rest of the trip ensconed in his (and my) sleeping bag. Luckily nobody else got sick. Thanks to the friends who came, let's do it again soon!

nice write-up!  I assume there's still a kerosene heater in the hut that you can use if ya haul in fuel for it? 

Hi Pete, no, there is no longer any kerosene heater, just the wood stove. There was a Coleman 2-burner stove for cooking that we wished we'd known about.

thanks - bummer about the heater being gone. 

Great report and photos. Brings back fond memories of the Duffy and Joffre/Matier.

I wondered what it looks like there, it was crap weather when I was there.  I heard reports that the WTH gets lots of traffic these days due to now having a stove (really cold when I was there years ago without).  Care to update on the hut numbers?  Certainly looks good!  Also, I agree on the ACC thing but for $not a lot a night it certainly is OK.

author=haggis link=topic=38102.msg154518#msg154518 date=1489511585]
Care to update on the hut numbers?

Which numbers do you mean?
As for crowdedness, on a midweek trip, there were 4 others the first night, nobody night 2, 4 night 3, and 2 night 4.  So with our party of 10, one of whom was sick with the flu and couldn't ski, we maxed out the hut at 14 people. I think it comfortably sleeps about 20. They are considering adding a caretaker hut for the ACC to control the crowds on weekends.

Another nice thing is there is a huge supply of crocs. Apparently the old floor got worn out by people's ski boots, so they are now asking everyone to wear hut shoes. I brought some booties, but the crocs would be fine if you wanted to pack light.

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kamtron
2017-03-11 15:48:16