Deck to come so

where is itlll Bona is

getting very agitated

her deck is not hereText And PhotographyBy James Kay

Imagine waking up in a warm, dry bed withjaw-dropping scenery outside the window ofyour cozy room. There are no roads in sight.The aroma of a hot breakfast fills your nos-trils. Your camera gear is nice and dry. You

didn’t need a huge backpack stuffed with yourcamera gear, tent, sleeping bag, food and cook-ing gear to get here. The only pack you’ll needis a day pack filled with camera gear, a water bot-tle and an extra jacket. Imagine gourmet meals.No setting up camp in hailstorms. Hot showers.No mosquitoes buzzing your head as you shoveldown your evening gruel, and no threat of beingflattened by speeding RVs as you jockey for posi-tion amid 20 other photographers at the side ofthe road. If this sounds appealing to you—and Iknow it does—then you’re going to love the worldof backcountry lodges.

Other than comfort, there are a number of rea-

In TheIn The

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Deck tk to fit in this beautifulspace which I could use right now to bring this to a close etc.

Text And Photography By James Kay

XX Outdoor Photographer

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Comfort Back countryComfort Back country

Month 1997 XXXX Outdoor Photographer

decided that a little less “manly-man”adventure against the elements and a lit-tle more comfort might be a refreshingchange of pace.

My first experience with “comfort-able” backcountry accommodationsoccurred during an anniversary trip tothe Canadian Rockies with my wife,Susie. We were spending a month back-packing, climbing, kayaking and pho-tographing around Banff, Jasper andYoho national parks. As I organized thetrip months before, I realized I couldscore a few points with her if, on ouranniversary day, I didn’t schedule someback-breaking, bushwack accent withfull packs over some storm-swept alpinedivide. Instead, I arranged for severalnights in a cozy cabin at Lake O’HaraLodge in Yoho National Park. I figurednot only would we be very comfortable,but I’d be able to photograph the dra-matic scenery surrounding Lake O’Harawithout needing to be a pack mule.

Lake O’Hara Lodge consists of amain building and a handful of smallcabins at the edge of brilliantly huedLake O’Hara. This beautiful turquoiselake sits in a glacial basin surroundedby some of the most dramatic sceneryin the Canadian Rockies. Fifty miles ofmeticulously groomed hiking trails leadto a number of alpine lakes and ridge-lines, making this a hiker’s and pho-tographer’s paradise. Mountainsides oflarch trees change to golden yellow dur-ing the last half of September. For thebest photographic vantage points, I’drecommend the Yukness Ledges, Wix-away Gap and All Souls’ trails. Comeprepared for gourmet meals, afternoontea, hot showers and a very cozy atmo-sphere. Summer access is provided byshuttle bus, while winter visitors mustski seven easy miles along the fire road.While you may need to increase thelimit on your credit card before leavinghome, you won’t regret it.

In general, the Canadian Rockies isworld-renowned for its wide variety ofbackcountry accommodations, rangingfrom primitive shelters to luxurious lodges.The vast majority are only accessed viaski/hiking trails or helicopter. They rangefrom basic sturdy shelters perched onhigh ridges for climbers, which can behad for about $15 per night, to com-fortable and cozy lodges, such as LakeO’Hara Lodge, which go for around $300per couple per night.

Assiniboine Lodge falls into the cat-

sons why you might want to considerhooking up with a lodge or a hut in thebackcouns can throw during overnighttreks, lodges and hits are ideal. Or sup-pose you simply don’t have the physi-cal ability or the inclination to strap ona huge backpack bulging with campingand camera gear for a week in the back-country. Perhaps you’re a roadside shooterand have already captured all the stan-dard pullout shots in the national parksand are looking for something off the

beaten path without sacrificing creaturecomforts. Maybe you just want a breakfrom sleeping in a soggy tent and wak-ing up with fogged-up lenses every morn-ing. With food and shelter provided,think of all the lenses, film and extracamera bodies you can take with you.

I’ve done my share of time in storm-battered rock shelters perched precari-ously on some crumbling glacial cleaverin the middle of nowhere, and in manyways, I enjoy that. Recently, though, I

egory of rustic and comfortable with itsdramatic setting below the 11,844-foot,Matterhorn-like Mount Assini-boine. Heated private rooms,electricity and full meal serviceare provided. The surroundingarea offers great day hiking and thephotography possibilities are superb. Thelodge can be reached via a 17-mile trailor helicopter flight, or you can hike orski in while your gear is flown in. Cap-ture first light on Mount Assiniboinereflected in Magog Lake as you keep aneye out for grizzlies. An easy trail upNublet Peak provides a panoramic viewof the peaks and lakes around MountAssiniboine. A short hike to WonderPass, especially during autumn with theyellow larch trees, provides beautifulviews of Lake Gloria in its deep glacialvalley at the base of the mountain.

Built in 1914 by the Great NorthernRailroad, Granite Park Chalet in GlacierNational Park, Montana, serves as a hiker’sshelter at the end of the Garden Wall trail.

Along with very basic, dorm-like, unheatedrooms without showers, a rustic kitchenprovides cook stoves, pots, plates, cut-lery and boiling water for meals. Whilelimited freeze-dried dinners are availablefor purchase, most hikers bring their ownfood. Sweeping panoramas of the McDon-ald Creek Valley and surrounding peaksprovide the setting.

The chalet is accessed by hiking seven

miles along the moderate flower-linedHighline/Garden Wall trail. Surely oneof the most beautiful walks in NorthAmerica, the trail winds along abovetreeline just beneath the jagged ridge-line of the Continental Divide. Once youreach the chalet and drop off your gear,a moderate trail leads to the top of 8,435-foot Swiftcurrent Peak. Perched on theContinental Divide, the peak provides

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�� Digital gives us a chance to do something we could neverdo with film: back up and protect our images while still in the field.

Of course, even though huts make the backcountry more comfortable,we still don’t want to carry too much. Two main choices emerge for

backup—small, portable hard drives, such as those from Kanguru, andportable CD burners, like RoadStor from MicroSolutions. Both have built-in

card readers to download images from memory cards and both will work with battery power. The lightweight, compact hard drives store many gigabytes of dataquite easily. However, they’re more sensitive to being roughly handled. The durable burners let you create multiple CDs for reliable backup, but the CDs are limited to approximately 700 MB of data each.

Essential

Gear...

XX Outdoor Photographer

prepared for raging blizzards at the Tas-man Saddle or Grand Plateau huts anymonth of the year.

The first thing I noticed when I vis-ited the Tasman Saddle hut many yearsago was the system of steel cables boltedinto the surrounding bedrock that holdthe hut in place during typical “blows.”This is one of the few huts in the worldwhere you need to rope up when youvisit the latrine. There are few placeson Earth with such easy access to hugeglaciated mountains and these huts pro-vide the only reasonable shelter. Sur-viving in a tent could be just that.

I once spent seven days hunkereddown in the Grand Plateau hut duringearly summer while successive stormfronts hammered the mountains aroundus. I had planned to photograph a climbof Mount Cook up the famed Linda Face,but the chest-deep snow and constantstorms thwarted our efforts. While wemanaged to get out of the hut for briefsessions of photography between wavefronts, we never had a chance to climbCook. If we had been in a tent, our res-cue team would have needed sonar tolocate us. Ten days after I returned home,the entire northeast corner of the moun-tain fell off in what geologists called a

a wide-angle view from Mount Cleve-land in the north to Reynolds Peak inthe south. Another short climb to thedivide allows for views of GrinnellGlacier and three turquoise lakes in thebasin far below. Wildflowers fill themeadows surrounding the chalet in lateJuly and early August, and the settingsun illuminates the towering flanks ofMount Gould every night.

While it may be a simple endeavorto spend a week photographing in thehigh country during the gravy days ofsummer based out of a tent, winter con-ditions make it much more difficult.Most huts and lodges in the CanadianRockies are now open in winter and canbe accessed via helicopter if you wishto avoid the ski or snowshoe in. I don’tneed to mention the obvious advantagesof having a warm room at night to dryout camera gear and heat up your fin-gers before you venture outside foranother round of photography.

If you’re looking for something morealong the lines of a storm-battered shel-ter in a spectacular alpine setting, it’stough to beat the hut system in MountCook & Westland National Parks in theSouthern Alps of New Zealand. Althoughthe calendar may indicate summer, be

ALASKA:Thompson Pass Mountain Chalet30 miles north of ValdezMile 19 Richardson Highway, Box 1540 Valdez, Alaska 99686 (907) 835-4817email: chalet@alaska.net

CALIFORNIA:Peter Grubb Hut, Baenson Hut, Bradley Hut, Ludlow Hut Clair Tappaan Lodge, P.O. Box 36, Norden, CA 95724(530) 426-3632www.sierraclub.org/outings/lodges

Meiss Meadow HutSierra Ski Touring/HuskyExpress P.O. Box 176, Gardnerville, NV 89410 (775) 782-3047www.highsierra.com/sst/

Pear Lake Ski HutSequoia National Park(559) 565-3759email: a-seqnha@inreach.comwww.sequoiahistory.org/pearlake/pearlake.htm

COLORADO:Hidden Treasure Yurtlocated on New York Mountain in Eagle County, Colorado(800) 444-2813email: htayurt@yahoo.com

Red Mountain HutsSouthwestern ColoradoRed Mountain Enterprises,David & Karen Dow, 1922 N. 2nd Ct., Grand Junction CO 81501 (970) 257-0787reservations@skihuts.com

NEW HAMPSHIRE:High Mountain Huts(network of eight huts) White Mountain National Forest (603) 466-2727www.outdoors.org/lodging/huts/index.shtml

Randolph Mountain Club White Mountain National ForestGray Knob, Crag Camp, The Log Cabin and The Perchwww.randolphmountainclub.org

NORTH CAROLINA ANDTENNESSEE:LeConte Lodge, Great Smoky Mountains National Park250 Apple Valley Rd., Sevierville, TN 37862 (865) 429-5704email: reservations@leconte lodge.comwww.leconte-lodge.com

GEORGIA:Len Foote Hike InnAmicalola Falls State Park(800) 864-7275www.hike-inn.com

MICHIGAN:ABR Trails Rustic Cabins, E5299 West Pioneer Rd., Ironwood, MI 49938 (906) 932-3502www.michiweb.com/abrski/lodging/

WYOMING:Rendezvous HutsGrand Teton National ParkRendezvous Ski and Snowboard Tours 1110 Alta North Rd., Alta, WY 83414 (307) 353-2900email: skiyurts@yahoo.com

IDAHO:Williams Peak YurtSawtooth Mountain Guides, P.O. Box 18, Stanley, ID 83278 (208) 774-3324email: getaway@satoothguides.com

OREGON:Wing Ridge HutP.O. Box 714, Joseph, OR 97846(800) 646-9050wingski@wingski.comwww.wingski.com

Canadian RockiesAlpine Club of Canada(403) 678-3200Canadian Rockies Backcountry Lodges www.canadatrails.ca/lodging/ldgbc.html

Lake O’Hara Lodge(250) 343-6418, (403) 678-4110www.lakeohara.com

Mount Assiniboine Lodge(403) 678-2883e-mail: assinilo@telusplanet.netwww.canadianrockies.net/assiniboine/lodge.html

Purcell Lodge (250) 344-2639e-mail: places@rockies.netwww.purcell.com

Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand Alpine Guides011-64-3-4351-834 e-mail: mtcook@alpineguides.co.nzwww.alpineguides.co.nz/agl/homehtm

Glacier National Park, MontanaGranite Park Chalet(800) 521-7238 e-mail: info@glacierguides.comwww.glacierguides.com

Re

sour

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one-in-10,000-year geologic event. TheLinda Face was gone. We would havebeen the last party to climb it.

The huts in Mount Cook & WestlandParks provide bunks with mattresses,cooking equipment and utensils. Yourbody is your only heat source. You’llneed to bring a sleeping bag and food.Access is provided via fixed-wing skiplanes followed by a short traverse onskis or snowshoes. Unless you’re famil-iar with glacier travel techniques, I’dhighly recommend contacting AlpineGuides in the park. They can book thehuts, arrange your flights and providefully guided trips up the high peaks andacross the heavily crevassed terrain.

If given a choice, I usually prefer tospend my backcountry nights in a tent orout in the open under the stars. I’ve dis-covered, however, that it’s not so badevery once in a while to have a roof overmy head and a warm, dry place to lay outmy camera gear at the end of the day.While I wouldn’t like to see huts and shel-ters festooning every ridgeline in everymountain range, the occasional hut orlodge can often provide welcome relief.Judging by their increasing popularityover the last couple decades, many peo-ple would agree. OP