The Harrison Hut and the trail accessing it sit on the traditional territory of the Lil’wat Nation. As we work and travel, we humbly acknowledge our presence as visitors to this land, and appreciate the beauty and sustenance it provides.

Some context for the area

Historically, getting to Harrison Hut involved driving down an FSR on the northwest side of the Meager Creek, crossing the creek near the Meager Hot Spring, and then following the road up to the trailhead. However, in 2010 Mount Meager experienced one of the largest landslides in Canadian history, wiping out the access. So, the VOC built a trail in 2013 connecting the existing trail to the Perkins Main FSR (a branch taking off of the Lillooet River South FSR making some distance away form the slide-affected area),  eliminating the need to cross Meager Creek altogether.

View of the landslide debris (Duncan M)

Circa 2018, logging began in the area. Part of the planned cut block intersected with this newly constructed trail, making it unsafe to travel through while logging is in progress. Fortunately, the logging activities meant that a new FSR was created through the slide-affected areas that connected directly to the old trailhead, so the club started using it as primary access to the hut on an occasional, permit-assisted basis. This situation was less than ideal, but it ensured at least occasional access for maintenance activities could still take place. In the fall of 2024, this “new” FSR was decommissioned due to the end of logging operations in the area, which leads to the following story…

What happened last time

Harrison Hut is one of my favourite places on Earth. My very first VOC trip was to Harrison Hut, and ever since I’ve always wanted to go back. Words cannot describe my love towards the area, you would just have to experience it for yourself.

Early November of 2024, we finally received our permit for the fall workhike to Harrison Hut. Unlike previous years, this permit stipulated that the lower FSR was not available for travel, either by foot or by motorized means. That left the old unmaintained trail as our only option of getting to the hut.

Naturally, we thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to scout out the conditions of this short and seemingly trivial part of the approach. After all, this wasn’t my first bushwack, nor did I expect it to be the hardest. From the map it looked straight forward, just sidehill below the treeline for about 5 km. Historically this takes about 2 hours to complete at an average pace, so even if we manage half of that it would still only take us 4 hours to get to the other side.

Goodness gracious me, was it bad.

In the end it took me more than 6 hours to make it through, and this is after I left the rest of the group to run ahead after the halfway point. The last person arrived some 9 hours after starting the hike. Small trees on the route were at the perfect height to smack hikers in the face, and the devil’s clubs in the cut blocks implanted my hands with a small family of thorns. The fact that it was dark and raining did not help with the navigation. When I got to the campsite, I dropped my packs and ran back to help carry more stuff for people who were still struggling behind. By the time I finally sat down on my tarp to make dinner, all I had in my mind was the pure hatred that I have towards this trail. I was hungry but I didn’t even care about food. I just wanted a good trail to Harrison Hut.

Anyway, that was last year: thoroughly traumatizing and not at all an experience I want to repeat. So, restoring this trail became a personal vendetta.

Some details on the trail

Here’s what we gathered from our last outing: The trail wasn’t a complete disaster from start to end. Everything from the trailhead leading to the first new cut block was in very good shape, with just a bit of deadfall to be removed. The first new cut block was where the disaster began. It was just a mess of logs, decayed wood, bushes, devil’s clubs, and debris scattered over ~150m of opening. This distance might not sound like a lot, but it was an absolute nightmare to travel through. After the cut block, we encountered an older cut block where small trees were starting to grow back. Here the trees were just at the perfect height where all the branches are right in the hiker’s face. This lasted for about a kilometer. You then encountered a second new cut block, though this one was much more manageable than the previous one, requiring only some lopper work to expose the original footbed. There’s a viewpoint around the 3km mark of the trail. Then it entered a third new cut block that spanned about 500m. This one was by far the worst, with no visible trail and massive logs everywhere obstructing the path of travel. After this section, the trail became visible again, however now the challenge was the amount of large and complex deadfall that was present. Right after this section, 4.8 km in, the trail joined an old FSR.

Friday

Duncan and I anticipated around 15 participants on this trip. However, we seem to have overestimated the amount of people who can take 5 straight days out of their lives to be spent building a trail in the middle of nowhere (after all, not all of us are unemployed). In the end, only 7 people would stay for the entire duration (Friday to Tuesday). This includes me, Duncan MacIntyre, Alexander Liu, Anabelle Parrella, Roseisa Weeraratne, Aaron Lee, and Tristan Lefferts. Noah Wyse would be there only for Friday. Tom Curran, JJ James, and Gwen Farmer would arrive Saturday morning and leave in the afternoon of Sunday. Cassandra Elphinstone and Shaojie Huang would come up with the previous group but stay until the end.

The rockfall

The area in which the hut is situated is somewhat geologically unstable, the best example being the 2010 Mount Meager Landslide. The instability means that there are often rockfalls on the FSR, which I’ve seen from my two previous visits to the area. In previous years, this is usually easily resolved by having someone run ahead of the car to remove potentially damaging boulders from the path. However, the one we encountered on this outing was so significant, we thought dynamites and bulldozers would be required to clear the path.

Luckily, the VOC specializes in unconventional solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. For the moderately sized boulders, we use the peavy (a long metal rod) and our quads to shift them out of the way. For the ones that are too large to move even with the help of mechanical advantage, we were able to tow them away with the truck. For the one particularly uncooperative boulder, Noah Wyse and I resorted to dropping smaller rocks on it until it broke into smaller pieces. After a good ~45 minutes of hard work, the road was finally wide enough for our cars to pass. Great success.

FSR clearing

One of the primary objectives of Friday was to clear the FSR between the 28 km turn off from Perkins Main to the trailhead. This job was performed by a team of people lopping, with myself operating the bush saw up ahead. Operating the bush saw was an incredibly powerful experience, as it basically just deletes whatever plants get in your path. It made me feel like an evil capitalist mowing down the forest. But of course, what we were trying to achieve was quite the opposite.  After a hard-working afternoon, we were able to clear the road all the way up to the trailhead.

Trailhead camp setup

As we cleared the trail, the rain started to come down, and by the time we cleared our way to the camp, it really started to pour. Duncan had brought a massive tarp, so we promptly set up a shelter and set up all the amenities. Considering that a good amount of person days would be spent at this place, Duncan and Aaron set out to dig a couple of holes for people to poop in. Alex and Anabelle volunteered to prepare dinner for our first night. They cooked up a pot of curry with rice, which was delicious even by front country standards. Noah left the campsite before dusk to comply with our permit, unfortunately missing out on the great meal.

After dinner, Duncan and I waited for a window of clear weather to scout ahead. We ran all the way to the first cut block with my drone. After some aerial surveillance, we went into the cut block to try and determine a path of least resistance. It was here where I slipped and instinctively grabbed a devil’s club for balance, as a result a group of thorns delightfully implanted themselves in my right thumb. After a few rounds around the cut block, we headed back as the sky started to darken.

 

Back at camp, the rain started to pour again as night fell. I spent some time sitting in the car with my laptop, analysing the drone photos that I just took. Aerial footage is often helpful with navigation in the backcountry. I’ve utilized this many times to help with route finding. However, in an environment like that of a cut block, the features were too dense and complex for the drone to be effective. I was still able to familiarize myself with the area by looking at these photos. Ultimately, they were not as helpful as I’d hoped.

After staring at my screen for a solid hour, Duncan joined me in the car to talk about our plan for the next day. After a comprehensive discussion about team distribution, landslide risks, and other logistical hurdles, we finally went to sleep half past midnight.

 

 

 

Saturday

Matt Gunn, a past VOCer who wrote the SWBC scrambling bible, expressed interest in filming our efforts for an upcoming documentary of his. We thought that this would be a fantastic opportunity to showcase the good work that the VOC does for the outdoor community, so we invited his producer Alexi to come on our trip and film our activities. Alexi followed various groups throughout the weekend, documenting their actions with his fancy camera and drone. He came up alongside Tom, Cassandra, JJ, Gwen, and Shaojie.

We decided that we should be split into three crews: a scouting crew, a chainsaw crew, and a general-purpose group. The scouting crew, led by Duncan, would charge ahead to find the best route and put up trail markers as they travel. The chainsaw group consisted of just me, Cassandra, and Tom. The last group, led by Aaron, would have most of the tools, and they would slowly work their way down the trail to clear everything that hasn’t been cleaned out by the two previous teams. After breakfast each team headed into the forest to start their day of work.

Cassandra learned to chainsaw from Jeff Mottershead on this very trail some 10+ years before, and now she has become the teacher with me as the student. I observed as she and Tom explained the intricacy of removing downed trees, which is a far more involved and difficult task than it seems. To effectively employ the chainsaw, one must first consider all the forces acting on the log. In a simple case, a deadfall is compressed on one side, and strained on the other, so it’s important to sequence the cut in such a way that the wood splits away from the blade instead of pinching into it. The next thing to consider is the way in which everything is going to move after the cut is made. You wouldn’t want the log to fall onto the blade, and you definitely don’t want it to fall onto you or your friends. Only after considering all these different factors should the chainsaw be started.

Starting the chainsaw & Tom’s mechanical engineering seminar

Hello, you have just been bamboozled. The chainsaw won’t start.

Or rather, we were bamboozled, because the chainsaw just won’t start no matter how hard we pull on the starter cord. We tried for a long time, thinking that it’s simply because the chainsaw has been dormant for a while. I don’t remember how long it went on for but pulling on that cord was definitely the most physically strenuous part of the day. It was wet, my arm and back were starting to hurt, and we were definitely having less fun as the minutes went by. At some point we realized that brute forcing just isn’t going to cut it, so we started to investigate.

Tom repeatedly emphasized to us as we pulled the cord: “To run an internal combustion engine, you need three things: Fuel, compression, and ignition.”  We can smell the fuel being injected into the engine at full choke, so we knew that wasn’t an issue. We can feel the resistance when pulling the cord, so we know we were compressing the cylinder. That leaves ignition, which is done by the sparkplug, so we decided to open up the engine and check what’s going on inside. Turned out there was a tiny bit of debris that somehow made its way into the gap in the sparkplug, redirecting the current and neutralizing the spark. We removed said debris with my trusty army knife, and upon reinstalling the engine back together the chainsaw quickly sputtered into life. Great success!

After a few demonstrations from Cassandra, I took over the chainsaw to practice my skills. Holding the chainsaw for the first time was an interesting experience. I placed the saw where I intended to make the cut, and it just started melting through without much effort. Removing my first deadfall felt incredibly accomplishing. I watched as what was once blocking the trial now tumbled down the hill out of our sight. A sense of satisfaction followed. At that moment I really considered dropping out of school to do this for a living. But there wasn’t any time for daydreaming, the trail is still long and there was still lots to be done. I continued chainsawing for the rest of the morning, improving my skills and gaining good experience with the help of two incredible mentors.

 

 

The cut block

Upon arriving at the cut block, a route has already been marked by Duncan’s crew and it had already received some improvements from Aaron’s group. The weather also started to clear, which gave everyone a much-needed break. The real challenge came at the end of the cut block. A whole bundle of very large logs piled on top of each other, with no sign of solid ground underneath. After several passes by the chainsaw crew, we decided that the correct solution should be to reroute the trail lower. This route makes more sense on a topo map, since it essentially straight lines the later third of the cut block, and it was my recommended line from analysis of the drone photos. This route would mean less complex and unpredictable chainsaw jobs, but it also meant that some of the efforts from the other crews would go to waste. We ultimately went with this strategy, knowing that we would have to abandon the good work done by others from earlier in the day. After some more shovelling, lopping, and sawing, we managed to make this new route work beautifully. By the time we finished working the cut block, people were starting to get tired and hungry. Some decided to head back to camp and prepare dinner, while the rest carried the chainsaw and its associated tools further down the trail in preparation for the next day.

Dinner & campfire

For dinner this day we had bbq. While preparing the food for this trip, I have stupidly forgotten that to make a burger would require burger buns. We ended up making do with Wonder Bread, which really wasn’t the worst. These burgers ended up being some of the best I’ve ever tasted in my life. As the sky began to dim I decided to start a campfire, and people sat around the fire with high spirits from the scrumptious dinner. Without any prior communication, Alex had decided to bring marshmallows, and I had brought butter cookies with chocolate. Smore’s were quickly produced, and our lives became so much sweeter.

As the darkness fell and the stars emerged, people became sleepy from their hard day of work and began to turn in. Having committed to cleaning up before going to bed, I stayed up a little longer to tidy up our camp. As I finished stashing all the food back into the car, I noticed the aurora. The mountains around set the stage as the light beams began their dance across the sky. It started out subtle but grew into this impressive spectacle. I was hesitant to head to sleep as I did not want to miss out on something so unique and beautiful. It was almost 1 AM by the time I reluctantly went into the tent for some much-needed rest.

Sunday

Waking up at 6 AM, I felt energetic. The same can’t be said about other people around me, so I quietly got up and out of the tent to start preparing breakfast. The weather was beautiful, and it is just the type of morning that I love to have in the backcountry. For breakfast on this day, I had prepared pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. I had planned to spoil the crew on this day, knowing that there will be a drop in food quality as we migrate towards the campsite at the end of the trail. No one else woke up for a while, so I got to take in the quietness as I churn out the pancakes one by one. Around an hour after I started cooking, people started to appear from the tents. The breakfast was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone, fueling people up for another day of challenge ahead.

Our plan for the day was to move everyone to the second camp site, located at the far end of the old Harrison Hut Trail. Duncan and Tristan would stay behind to shuttle the weekend crew out while the rest of us worked our way towards the other end.

The stroll

Shaojie and I took on much of the group’s food for our two nights at the second campsite, so our packs were fairly hefty. Adding on the chainsaw with its associated equipment, we were now carrying a soul-crushing amount of weight. So, we decided that we should just book it to the other end to shorten our suffering, while others walk slowly as they lopped their way along the trail. We ran ahead of everyone, only stopping to chainsaw the occasional log. As we encountered an area where more work needed to be done, we dropped the chainsaw and continued to camp, with a plan of returning to complete those sections once we disposed of our payload. On the way there we discovered that the third new cut block that we previously thought to be an absolute nightmare was actually much nicer than we remembered. We deduced that the combination of darkness and overgrowth in the fall contributed to difficulties in navigation. When the hiker is off the footbed, even by just a meter, the terrain becomes infinitely more difficult to travel through. Having discovered this pleasant surprise, we carried onward to our destination without much difficulty. Upon arrival, we took some well-deserved breaks before heading out again. Cassandra took a bath in a stream nearby, cooling off in an otherwise scorching day.

People were already exhausted by the time they arrived at camp, as the trail was still not an easy one to get through. Most opted to stay and rest at the new camp, setting up and cooking dinner. Seeing how precious the chainsaw runtime was, I decided to head back out with Aaron and Cassandra to chainsaw as much as we could until sundown before we came back for dinner. We took a can of spam and some treats with us, and off we went back onto the trail.

 

Going back with more chainsaw work

With Tom leaving in the afternoon, we recruited Aaron to join the chainsaw group. Much like myself a day prior, he also had no previous experience with the chainsaw. Having done a solid day and a half of chainsaw work, I became the tutor for Aaron as he began to learn. He quickly became familiar with the operation and started contributing ideas and opinions. As we worked through the evening, our bodies started to protest. The hot day had depleted us of sodium, and the long work hours with minimal rest burnt up many calories. We decided that the obvious solution to both problems would be the can of spam that I had brought with me. So, there we were, half past 7, having not eaten anything since lunch; the three of us opened the can of spam, and started going through it like it’s our last meal on Earth. The unnatural tasting cured meat actually energized us, and we continued to work for an hour and a half before heading back for some real food.

Monday

As we woke up in the morning, strains from our many days on the trail began to show. Mainly the thorns that many of us fell victim to started to infect, but also many other wounds the trail left us with. A small “field operating room” was set up, and we began plucking the nasty little bastards out of each other’s hands and body and patching up the various cuts. This was a sweet moment during the trip, where the gentleness of people as they care for each other really contrasted with their fierce work on the trail.

For our last full day of work on the trail, we decided that it would be best to split into three sections again. After arriving in the late morning, Duncan would go past our camp with Shaojie, Tristan, and Anabelle to clear out a small cut block at the very beginning of our existing trail. Alex would stay around camp to make lunch, lop, and make sure the bears don’t get our food. Aaron, Cassandra and I would head back out to continue with our chainsaw work, and Roseisa would lop with us.

 

We let Aaron start operating the chainsaw that day, hoping to make him a competent operator by the end of the trip. The morning and early afternoon went by without much complication. Some jobs were harder than the others, but overall there wasn’t anything that we were unable to tackle. Alex came by at some point with our lunches, and we were all thoroughly impressed by the backcountry DoorDash service that we were provided with. It was a chill day full of chainsawing, good food, and interesting conversations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The nap

Around 4PM, we encountered a particularly difficult challenge. Two massive trees had fallen with their root balls still intact on and above the trail. Cutting these trees risked destabilizing ground beneath the trail, and there also weren’t many good positions to cut from. At this point, we were all incredibly tired, having worked for many hours without rest. I decided that I would just ignore the problem and take a nap right there on the trail, leaving the problem to be figured out when I wake up. Having seen me lie down with the chainsaw, Aaron and Cassandra also joined in on the group nap. This was possibly the best decision I made on the entire trip. Waking up an hour later, we felt energized, confident, and ready to work on our next challenge. We were able to figure out a plan for the two downed trees, and it worked beautifully. I specifically remember these two trees from our last visit, having to hop over them several times with massive backpacks was an absolute nightmare. It’s almost as if I have defeated a past opponent who used to haunt me on this trail, which made me feel so incredibly accomplished upon clearing them. I walked back and forth through the once blocked section, proud to have resolved this blockage.

After just two other fairly easy cuts, the chainsaw team completed the task of removing every single deadfall from the trail. We came in thinking that the chainsaw might not even get past the first cut block, and now we have completely shattered the expectation. With a little bit of fuel left and some sunlight remaining, I decided that I will cut two slices off of the massive log that used to haunt me, and bring them back to the club as souvenirs.

Satisfied with the fact that all major obstacles are now removed (Aaron L)

 

That night, everyone sat around the fire, happy with the work that we have accomplished. There was a lot of suffering, pain, and demoralizing events that happened throughout the trip, but none of that seem to matter anymore. We had accomplished more than we had set out to do, and done it beautifully. That night, a few of us decided to ditch the tent and sleep under the stars. The night was especially peaceful; stars in the sky, no wind, and no worries left.

Tuesday

I once again woke up at an unreasonably early time. Maybe my body just likes to savour more awake time in the mountains. I decided that I should take some time for myself and walked down the FSR to an opening. There I sat, immersed myself among the mountains. The peak, colossal yet detailed, static yet lively. The river down the valley, so vibrant yet calming, violent yet gentle. I can go on and on about everything that was going on around me, but the beauty of the land cannot be justifiably conveyed in this piece of writing, which is why I would encourage everyone reading this to visit Harrison Hut now that the access is restored. I find experience like this to be the purest form of joy, without any distractions or complications. This is the reason why I travel into the mountains, and why I volunteer so much time and effort into improving access. I want more people to feel this indescribable feeling, and to treasure this connection with the land. Right there in that moment, there was nothing else. It was just me and the mountains.

I unfortunately had to exit my own world as I wanted to finish cooking breakfast before others woke up. The group discussed our plan over breakfast, which is that we will try and make for the cars as fast as we can reasonably manage while finishing up the last bits of essential trailwork. I was the last to leave the campsite, carrying the pieces of wood that we cut the day prior. The two rounds were not easy to take. Aaron and I alternated holding them for our way back, and it made for some interesting contraptions as we tried to rig them onto backpacks. I ended up strapping one to my backpack, and just hand carrying the other. The two pieces of wood made my pack properly heavy, which gave me more time to take in the surroundings as I slowly made my way back to civilization.

Upon arriving at the cars, everyone was stoked. We loaded up the cars and said goodbye to this magical place that we are about to leave behind. After a good meal in Pemberton, the nine of us said goodbye to each other for the time being as we headed back to Vancouver and our ordinary lives.

Leaving this magical place (Joseph C)

Final few words

This trip taught me a lot. I learned some valuable chainsawing and trail building skills, which I have already started using and passing on to others, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I learned how to work with people, how to trust them, and how everyone can achieve so much when you believe in them and help them when they struggle. I also learned a lot about myself. I realized that work like this made me realize my self-worth like nothing else. Ultimately, we didn’t top any peaks, break any records, or even really get anywhere. All we did was help more people access a hut in the middle of nowhere. But this experience with the mountains is so beautiful, so valuable, and so essential to me that I believe by simply having someone be there, they become a better person. That is worth the world to me.

So, go out there, enjoy Harrison Hut now that it is once again accessible. I hope you find your journey to be as enlightening as my own!