We just completed our most rewarding and demanding hike as a family – hiking up to the Asulkan Hut and spending a couple nights. The hike starts in Roger’s Pass near Golden, BC and the trail starts at the ruins of Glacier House – an old stop on the CP railway and the birthplace of Canadian mountaineering and mountain culture.
The hut is perched in a magnificent location, just below glaciers. There are many options for exploring around the hut including glacial waterfalls, Mt. Youngs and the Pterodactyl. The hike took the family (with kids as young as 6) 4 hours to complete the 8km, 900m elevation gain (one way).
Awesome! Thanks for posting this, looks like a great trip! I’m going with a bunch of kids this week also, similar ages. I was wondering what areas you explored from the hut, without walking on the glaciers too much with kids. Thanks!!
So happy to hear other families are doing this! To be completely honest, the kids stayed within a stone’s throw of the cabin for 48 hours straight playing games and playing ‘cabin’. They had no interest in further exploring. The adults took turns going on day excursions. Pterodactyl is the bump behind the cabin. That is about an hour round trip. Some cliffs there so glad the kids weren’t there. Would have been fine with one adult per kid though if they had any interest. It is 99% impossible to walk on any glaciers. They are too inaccessible. However, there is a lot of snow pack near the cabin (with no glacier underneath, will melt by end of summer). We did a lot of walking across snow and boot sliding down. Wish I had a sled! Again, we didn’t bring the kids because they were too happy playing cabin and we didn’t want their boots to get soaking wet. We didn’t quite make it because I didn’t know it was possible at the time but hiking to the top of Young’s Peak I think would be the ultimate summer challenge from Asulkan Hut. We (adults) navigated up to the top of Asulkan Pass and then most of the way to the summit but the whole trip would take 5-6 hours I think, walking across a lot of snowpack. Looking over the backside of Asulkan Pass was great anyway.
Super Exciting! We are about to embark as a family of 4 up here in Summer (July). How was the water situation in the cabin itself? We’re trying to plan for what to bring up.
Sorry for the late late reply. There are glaciers above the cabin supplying rivers of water year-round past the cabin. We brought a large water drip-filter but there are also gigantic pots to boil water up there (it just takes a while to cool it down, even in the snowbank)