Bow Hut

The Bow Hut is an alpine hut located at an elevation of on the eastern edge of the Wapta Icefield in Banff National Park. It is the largest, best equipped, and most accessible of the four alpine huts on the Wapta Icefield, and serves as the base for a wide variety of ski tours and mountaineering ascents to half a dozen peaks on the Wapta. It is the easiest and safest starting point for the Wapta traverse; and Balfour Hut, the next hut on the traverse, can easily be reached from it in a day. It can also serve as an intermediate stop in a longer traverse which starts at the less easily accessible Peyto Hut. The hut is maintained by the Alpine Club of Canada.The hut sleeps 30 and is equipped with propane powered lamps and stovetop, and a wood stove for heating. There are two indoor drum toilets.HistoryThe original Bow Hut was built in 1968 by a group led by Peter Fuhrmann, who later became president of the Alpine Club of Canada from 1984 to 1988, and was funded by Peter and Catharine Whyte. The construction was done mostly by members of the Alpine Club and the Calgary Ski Club. The location of the hut, near Bow Glacier, was chosen to assist ski tourers and mountaineers entering the Wapta Icefield via Bow Lake. The old hut saw severe overuse, with up to 7,000 people a year using a building that only slept 14 people at a time. By the 1980s it was in a state of serious disrepair and surrounded by contamination from the outhouses, causing many people to refer to it as Bow Ghetto. In 1989 a new hut was built under the direction of Mike Mortimer, Chairman of the Huts Committee of the Alpine Club of Canada and later President from 1994 to 2001. Money for the facility was primarily provided by the Calgary and Edmonton Sections of the Alpine Club. The new facility is much larger than the previous one, with much better cooking, and waste disposal facilities; and with sleeping areas separated from the rest of the hut to accommodate a number of different groups at a time.