Last Night At Burton: Gatorade Is A Spice

Intro

In late July, after abrupt and considerable unpleasant disruption to my life, I decided the best thing to do with myself was to pick up the pieces and move to Australia for 2+ years with around sixty days to prepare. Despite the crunch, I was sad that I was unable to contribute to the Phelix rebuild in ’23 and I hoped to contribute to re-roofing Burton this summer, so I dutifully set aside a block of my remaining time in Canada to go up there. Park Politics resulted in the trip being pushed a month to almost-October, which in combo with a scheduling conflict in the attendees meant I could only go up for five days instead of the entire project.

Which meant I would have to haul ass to feel I contributed sufficiently. This is my last workhike for the VOC for the foreseeable future, after all. Knowing it was due to start snowing mid-week further incentivized the ass-hauling.

Due to the volume, I’ve attached all photos here as thumbnails – click through for the full size (some have content cropped out by the thumbnail, like helicopters).

Monday

So Monday the 23rd saw myself and Duncan Macintyre crawling up Rubble Creek heavily loaded – he with enough gear to survive the full project and myself with my gear pack and a further 35lbs of demolition tools in a front-pack which would have been spread amongst the three of us – Jacob came down with a cold, and remained home till Friday. We made pretty good time up the switchbacks, albeit by the lowest lake I was taking a break every 500m – wishing I was ten years younger again and realizing backpacks were not engineered to be worn in reverse when fully loaded. Don’t get old, folks, it’s a poor life path.

We made it to the boathouse around 1pm and had about forty-five minutes of faff realizing we didn’t have the combo for the canoes, until Duncan had a lightbulb moment and said they were probably scrawled inside the boathouse wall – and they were. A delightful 50 minute crossing of the lake, flat as glass, with bluebird warm skies, and we were at the hut around 3pm. Oh, how optimistic we were thinking these conditions would last!

As soon as the bags were dropped I got to work – we had been given a single instruction by Jacob: “Pull everything apart, nothing is being reused, get as much debris out by Helicopter on Tuesday as possible.” As I don’t waste time with a firm goal in sight, I spent the next four hours ripping the roof off by hand. Sheet by sheet, and then plank by plank, screaming a whole lot of pent-up frustration into the mountains whilst Duncan alternately looked up from his own hammer alarmed and asked if I required any assistance.

There are, I think, few better ways to overcome three months of emotional distress than unrestrained structural demolition under a hard deadline. It was exceedingly cathartic, given the memories I have associated with this hut which now haunt me. Sometimes you need to tear things down to build a better tomorrow, right?

By the time night fell at 7pm there were four sheets of tin remaining and 2/3rds of the original tongue and groove siding. We retired to cook a quick dinner, and Duncan opted to sleep in his tent after seeing the mouse population. I retreated to the attic, opened the window, pulled up the ladder – and discovered the mice access the hut by crawling in and out of the walls in the attic. Vertical surfaces offering zero barrier to them. They were respectful of my personal space, thankfully, and now I hold the dubious distinction of being the last person to sleep in the original Burton Hut while it was still mostly intact.

As I drifted off, I thought about the effort which went into building this hut in the first place, how well built it was to have lasted fifty-five years in this environment, and about Roland Burton – the only VOC’er to have a memorial hut named after them, despite continuing to be very much alive into the present day. In a club which thrives and exists through the contributions of its members, it says a lot about Roland’s impact on the VOC to have achieved that kind of legacy. I hope he is able to get up and see Nu-Burton when it is finished, and know that it is going to carry on.

We were up at the crack of dawn, I sent a wake-up call to Duncan by hammering on a prybar for the next sheet of roofing while my oats cold-soaked. The first heli load was due at 8am, so we were under the wire – ultimately it was delayed until 10 or something. This was great, as it gave us time to get most of the sheet metal off – which would save us down the line when we realized how much of the interior we had to remove to get at the insulation.

Over the course of the day thirteen loads of material came in, and three nets of hut material went out. We spent the afternoon alternately de-rigging loads as fast as possible and ripping the interior apart to pull out as much of the decaying styrofoam as possible. Sometime around 2pm, an old VOC’er Will showed up unannounced and scared the bejeesus out of me – I thought he was BC Parks coming to observe us. He had packrafted over and proved an incredible asset for the next few days. Will quickly set to work cutting down the longer siding pieces with a sawzall, and we managed to fit most of one side of the hut + all the sheet metal into the nets.

We discovered to our displeasure that the attic had been insulated with spun fiberglass at some point, which is where the mice had been living, and it was a sewer. We got as much out as we could before the last helicopter departed, but not as much as I would have liked while it was still dry. Late afternoon the rain arrived, we tarped over the hut, and Duncan set to cooking a large meal for when Jeff and the crew would arrive. Will and I ventured into the downpour and set up the few tents which had been sent up by heli. Around 9pm Jeff, Anton, Aaron, Quintus, and John arrived – soaked to the bone and exhausted. A few of them opted to just sleep in the partially demolished hut.

Around 3am the storm arrived with a vengeance, my tent fell over on my head and tried to drag me away like a parachute, and the tarps blew off the hut. Only a few of us got much sleep.

Wednesday

Wednesday opened slightly dry and devolved into one of the wettest days I have ever had the displeasure of enduring in the 14 years I have backpacked in the coast mountains. It was torrential, relentless, my rain gear was soaked through within an hour. As it turns out we were being hit with the edge of a tropical cyclone or something, lovely!

We set to work at 9am, working hard to keep warm, new tongue and groove rapidly crawling up the west wall of the hut. John & Duncan & Quintus erected a handy mess hall under his massive MEC Supertarp, and we relocated the food bins out of the hut to it – as the interior of the hut was being washed by a steady stream of mouse faeces from the insulation in the attic and wholly unsuitable for any utility. Discovering 14kg of canned chunked tuna and a 5 gallon bucket of quick-oats dispelled any illusions of our menu in the days to come. (I jest, the provisioning was most excellent with a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, no doubt far and beyond what the crew had back in 1969!).

Anton & I removed the bolts holding the arches to the original base frame. Folks, “*they don’t make it like they used to”* is a common refrain, but the fact that we could crack the nuts off those bolts with crescent wrenches after 55 years of being flooded annually is *mind blowing*. They were mint, threads were barely rusted, were these all replaced at some point and nobody left a memo?

Lunch was a delicious falafel wrap prepared by Duncan and helpers. I prepared myself arctic freeze gatorade with hot water and started us down a dark, dark road of culinary experimentation.

By noon we had the west side of the hut fully sheathed in Tongue & Groove and an hour or so later I completed my demolition of old-Burton, bashing the remaining east side planks off with a massive red prybar and an unhealthy amount of gusto given the abysmal weather conditions. Some of us then set to applying the vapor barrier to the west side, while others continued with mapping out where the new arches would be attached internally. As dusk approached, T&G began its relentless march upwards on the east side of the hut.

John proved to be an incredible asset to the project, his knowledge of construction an excellent pairing with Jeff’s mentally-prepared plans for how the hut was to go together, and an almost bottomless source of energy. I know that his instant jumping to any task set a great example for myself and kept me moving even as the weather continued to degrade.

We called it quits around 7pm for dinner, soaked beyond all belief, and enjoyed a Mexican bean soup prepared by Quintus. I put gatorade powder in my hot chocolate. Anton upped the ante: he prepared gatorade cocoa in his Spam tin with added coconut cream. The laminated menu was three sheets to the gale around us and “Gatorade:The Undiscovered Spice”  was the direction our food was now firmly headed in.

Thursday
Thursday opened once again optimistically dry, even sunny for a few hours to taunt us before it began raining again, and by noon was full-blown snow squalls mixed with sleet. Anton, mad lad that he is, put Gatorade powder and Allspice in his breakfast oats.

The snow level dropped down the mountains by the hour, The Table and Mount Price eventually being fully rimed in white when they came through the clouds. Despite the precipitation, and the wind off the glacier cutting through our soaked layers like a knife, we persevered – arches steadily went up on the west side of the hut whilst T&G continued its ascent on the east.

We consumed an entire 1.25kg tin of tuna for lunch. Anton made what could only be described as “dirtbag ceviche” by mixing lime gatorade power and canola oil into his tuna. Something along the lines of “gatorade tuna: better than you’d expect” was refrained. Severe weather in a harsh alpine environment, it does things to people…

Will took his leave during a short break in the weather early afternoon, paddling one canoe back for Friday’s shift-change shuttle. I love that about the VOC, how old members will show up at the most random moments and join something with gusto – it’s why I stick around.

By evening we had the last T&G installed on both sides, the last of the vapor barrier installed, and the hut was once again waterproof – Not bad for 28 hours of labor (168 worker-hours across the crew size!). Unfortunately, the hut was thoroughly soaked in liquid mouse poop inside, so it remained unusable for human purposes. We retired to the cooking tarp, enjoyed some curry, talked about the history of the VOC and what makes it so cool. Anton built a bridge to get to our tents, and we all fell into bed exhausted… Just in time for the last arm of the storm to slam into us. My tent attempted to make a hasty exit towards Whistler multiple times, trekking poles brutally assaulting my face just as I’d drift off despite the rocks I’d piled on the pegs, and torrential rain lashed from several sides at once. Coupled with some recurrent nightmares, very little sleep was had on my part until around 3am.

Friday

Sun. Glorious, warm sun and a forecast that it was due to stick around all day! Over breakfast I was informed that my primary reason for having to depart on Friday was no longer in the picture, and I was more than welcome to stay until Monday. I vacillated back and forth for an hour but while listening to Jeff explain the plan for the day and being unable to comprehend it conceptually – I had to accept that after the preceding four days of going hard my brain was mush, my fingers were swollen to twice their normal size, I had no remaining dry or clean gear, and my schedule in the real world was already tightly booked out until my flight to Australia on the 15th – and I couldn’t move any of those commitments without cell reception.

So Aaron and I packed up, helped raise the new apex beam, and helped get the first three arches in place on the east side. I left behind my candle-lantern, feeling the crew could use the cozy ambiance and hand-warming properties if the weather turned foul again next week. Around 11am we said our goodbyes and loaded into the lake, towing the spare canoe behind us. We had a beautiful, warm, bluebird crossing of about an hour with a steady beam reach from the west. Glorious views behind us of the snow-dusted Sphinx Glacier.

We met up with the Friday crew, forgot to give them the boathouse key (Jacob caught me breathlessly five minutes up the lakeshore), and hauled ass down Rubble Creek. Aaron, heavy-hauler in training, carried a contractor bag with 50lbs of wet fiberglass down strapped to his own pack and did not take a single break on the way down or complain once—what a legend.

On the way down we ran into a hiking group with children who commented on the contractor bag, and when I mentioned it was insulation they asked if we were VOC. The woman at the lead mentioned she had met her partner through the VOC, her young son with her had painted the outhouse a few years ago, and they were keen to hike over Gentian Ridge and lend a hand. Like I said earlier – us VOC’ers, we pop up when you least expect us.

Conclusion
This is the last that I’ll have to do with the VOC for a while, with work now taking me to the other side of the world indefinitely & further travels in the planning beyond that. By the time I return to Canada I’ll be nearly forty years old – well into the Ross & Jeff echelon of membership: leaving me unclear what form of participation I’ll have when that future arrives. It is heartwarming to reflect on the impact the VOC has had on my life, from the folks I’ve lived with for years, to the many lifelong friendships I’ve built, to some of the most epic adventures I’ve had – maybe I’ll write something about that aspect of the club in the future. Paraphrasing something Jeff said to me this week, there are many alpine clubs: but I will always be VOC.

Demolishing the Burton Hut down to the skeleton and helping get a good chunk of the new structure assembled within the limited time I had available was, I think, an excellent capstone to my eight years of activity in the club – and on a personal level to the work I’ve put into turning my life around this summer from a really brutal low point. Friday marks the last time I’ll be up in our snowcapped coastal alpine for a long time, and despite the horrific weather it was one of the best weeks with one of the best work crews I’ve ever enjoyed going hard alongside.

At the current pace, and with the quality of individuals up there, I suspect the hut will be buttoned up for winter ahead of schedule. I deeply look forward to making it my first alpine destination when I return to the country: lazily carving down the Guard-Deception col again, with the last light of the winterspring sun painting pink and orange across a dry, warm, cozy hut which will no doubt now outlive me – a legacy of club volunteer spirit which will see trips well into its second century thanks to our collective efforts this year.

UPDATE 10/06: Feeling I had insufficiently suffered relative to the rest of the hut crew (and seeing there were very few drivers lined up on the day of the pre-trip for this) I dutifully joined up with HMVDITTRAH: Burton Edition and hauled somewhere between 90-100lbs of tooling & trash down from the lake in three packs, along with an all-star crew of 16 other haulers. NOW I can hang up my boots and head off into the sunset.