A.O.Wheeler Hut

We went to A.O. Wheeler Hut in Glacier National Park to meet friends and to go skiing. We left on Friday afternoon and arrived at the trailhead at about 11:00. The hut was close to the highway, so it didn’t take that long to get to the hut. It was late, so almost everyone was asleep when we got there.

We went mainly to see friends but also to ski. The next day we skied with our friends Tom and Jocelyne up the Illecillewaet Valley. We were above the toe of the Illecillewaet Glacier but not on it. We turned around because it was getting too slabby and sticky. The skiing down was also slabby and sticky. We saw lots of fresh avalanche debris and a bit of old debris.

When we were skiing down, we met a spruce grouse that got extremely close to us but didn’t attack us. This other group of skiers passed us and told about how it attacked them on the way up, and when they skied by, we saw the spruce grouse attack them. The grouse bit and was hanging off of the pants of one of the skiers.

Some of the adults in our group were bothered by mice in the night. We also saw a marten circling the hut.

My friends were Sage and Jasmine. Our favourite game was Caterpillars & the Human. There were 2 caterpillars and 1 human. The human was just a human, and the caterpillars were humans wrapped with sleeping bags. The human wanted to eat the tails of the caterpillars, and the caterpillars turned into cocoons when their tails were free.

We made tunnels in the snow. They started with 3 holes, but we made 1 hole an igloo, so then the tunnels only had 2 holes. We also made a snow fort, and the walls were tall enough for us to stand in without being seen.

Heading up the valley