Phelix Demolition

Realizing I wrote this article for the journal but never put it on the website, so here you go! An 8+ month old trip report. Also, coincidentally very apt that this gets posted next to Jeff’s ‘wasps’ trip report.

Dates: July 22nd – July 25th, 2023
Participants: Aaron Lee, Christian Veenstra, Hamish, Haley Foladare, Jacob Grossbard, James Maltman, Joe Meyer, Juliane Bonnefoy, Laura Mantin, Seton Kriese, Sri Chaitanya, Ulrich Van Staden.

Day 1:

Seeing as I had plenty of free time this summer, and demolishing a roof in the backcountry sounded like a good time, I decided to join the Phelix roof demolition workhike. James Maltman, the organizer of the demo trip, who in addition to being the one who purchased most of the tools for the trip, was also my housemate this summer. As a result, I got to see not only the stack of receipts (from my Treasurer duties) but also the literal mound of hand tools piling up in our living room that would have to somehow make their way up to the hut over the demo weekend.

We were naively optimistic, James had a bag of wine and a pack of Raniers to bring up for the vibes. I distinctly remember being at the trailhead, my eyes getting bigger than my back – so to speak – tossing things in, thinking I could skip up the trail with God knows what clanking around in my backpack. This resulted in me carrying–in addition to all of my overnight gear, food, and a ton of tools – a day pack with eight-ish cans of Rainier hanging off of my front. Somehow over the course of the hike, the bag of wine had also found its way into my front pack. Thus my hubris was realized partway up the trail – slogging along, sweating, swearing, wishing I had opted not to bring the booze backpack, and convincing Aaron Lee to help me carry it for part of the time (he didn’t take too much convincing, thankfully).

I appreciated not needing to bring up the generator though (thanks Laura Mantin)!

Once we got to the hut, it was business time. Most of the crew was only up for the weekend, so we wanted to get the roof off before the end of Sunday. There was quite a bit of semi-to-uncontrolled chaos as we got ropes set up and a few people jumped on the roof – the bleats of power tools and the shouts of rooftop workers broke the serene lakeside stillness. The roofgoers would occasionally shout for the tools they required, while the people on the ground scrambled to find the required implement and tie it to the rope for hoisting.

We worked late into the evening, with the layers of the hut roof peeling off like an onion – metal sheeting, plywood, strapping, insulation. Meanwhile, the inner painted plywood was being removed from within. We had worked hard and were happy with what we’d gotten done, but there was still an immense amount of work to do.

Day 2:

We woke up not too terribly early and got back to work, to the pounding of hammers and the creak of pry bars tearing down all but the wooden framing. The worst job was dealing with the insulation: large swaths of moldy, mouse-dropping-ridden insulation were being unceremoniously chucked from the top of the roof, and it was the job of two or three very unlucky volunteers to put on Tyvek suits (which I dubbed the sweat-pockets, no further explanation required) and shove it into trash bags to be carried out when the helicopter brought up the building materials.

There was also a wasp nest on the roof, which James found out about the hard way – getting stung right next to his eye. That area of the roof had to be pointedly ignored for the rest of the day.

Slowly, the weekend-goers trickled out of the area to go to work or something the following Monday (couldn’t be me), leaving James Maltman, Jacob Grossbard, Sri Chaitanya, Juliane Bonnefoy, and me. The mammoth’s share of the work was done, but there were still some of the large cross-beams on the back side of the roof that needed to be taken down, and the wasp nest remained to be dealt with. It was also supposed to rain sometime that evening, and there was a debate as to whether we should try to finish up the demo and get tarps on the roof, or just hope for the best and finish it up Monday morning. We decided to go for one last push, not wanting to be the ones at fault for a water-damaged hut on the off-chance that the small amount of forecasted rain ended up being anything more…

We kept on working – hungry and tired, but determined. It finally came time to decide who would have to deal with the wasp nest, and thus, the sacred ritual of ‘nose goes’ commenced. I lost, and reluctantly got back into the ‘sweat-pocket’ and went to town on the thing. Buoyed by my increasingly loud stream of swear words, I relentlessly swung a hammer down onto the section of eaves containing the nest until it finally broke free. There must have been at least 10 wasps swarming around but somehow I managed not to get stung.

It came time to put the tarps on, and there had been some kind of miscalculation having to do with the area of tarps & roof. Thankfully we’d brought extra and managed to fully cover the roof before the rain started.

Day 3+:

What had started out as a small pitter-patter the evening before became a fully-fledged monsoon as the night wore on. Our patchy tarp job was put to the test, as gusts of wind threatened to rip pieces off. Water pooled in sections of the tarp, dripping into the hut, and getting blown in whenever the wind lifted a section up. We all sat around the hut that morning, waiting and waiting and waiting for the rain to let up. There were some brief periods of less intense rain during which we had the opportunity to clean up the demo detritus and cut pieces of metal and wood to an adequate size for them to be helicoptered out. Mostly, though, we sat around bored and continuously repaired the mess of tarps that had miraculously not flown away yet.

I remember drafting a list of non-essential things to do to pass the time – we sanded mold off the hut framing, built a bridge over a creek on the way to the hut, and left other list items – like fixing the outhouse – unfinished. Mostly though, we sat in boredom and got cabin fever. Eventually, James and I headed down to our car earlier than we had planned, leaving Jacob, Sri, and Juliane at the hut to coordinate with the helicopters. We bumped into Adam on the way down, witnessing the massive steel and wood beams being unloaded by crane onto our helicopter staging area before stopping at the Pemby McDonald’s for some much-needed greasy food.