Happy New Year’s!

We decided to start our new year with a trip to a cabin in the mountains. We rented a place called the Hermit Thrush Cabin. It’s a cabin located in the subalpine forest at 1,920 m (6,300 ft) above sea level on the slopes of Mount McKirdy. There are a lot of people in, and around, Valemount with the McKirdy family name, and the cabin is owned by Anne and Gord. From looking at Wikipedia, the Mountain is named after Fulton Alexander McKirdy, who settled in the area in 1906, staking his claim along the McKirdy Creek, which you will hear more about later in this post. We had quite a dump of snow before Christmas and were looking forward to trying out the new Touring skis we had bought ourselves for Christmas.

One of the things we have learned living in Valemount is that you can never guess the backstory for anyone that lives here. We have had many quiet conversations with Gord at Vale Coffee since we moved here in May. But, only recently we discovered some of his background. This is an old article about what he does, but when a cutblock is about to be harvested, he goes through it and selects trees that he thinks would be suitable for sound boards for high-end pianos. The article refers to Heintzman pianos, but they have a custom-made Steinway on their house as a thank you for the wood they have provided for sound boards for Steinway pianos.

Having booked the cabin back in early December we had discussed various options for getting our food, sleeping bags, clothes, etc. to the cabin with us. We had decided on buying the sturdy plastic sled we had seen at Home Hardware to tow up everything up to the cabin. Our plan was to buy the sled on New Year’s Eve so we could have it all loaded up when we left the morning of January 2nd. Who knew that a tree would come down on a power line and there would be an outage the afternoon of New Year’s Eve that closed all the businesses. So, we dashed there on the morning of the 2nd, as soon as they opened, only to discover that on the morning of New Year’s Eve, someone had come in and bought all of the toboggans, including the one we had been looking at. Lesson: when you see something you want in Valemount, buy it, because it might not be there when you get back. It was now 8:30am, and we were to be at the McKirdy house for 10:00am. After quickly thinking through our options we headed to Alpine Rentals to see if they had any toboggans for purchase, or rental. They did not, but we did end up being the proud owners of two, thirty litre back-country backpacks (we decided to forego the avalanche shovels). Back at the house, we quickly re-packed everything we had planned to put on the sled into the backpacks, and headed to the departure point with our ~40lb loaded backpacks.

To get to the cabin, you park at the house of the owners, and hike up from there after they give you some instructions about the cabin. It’s about a 6.5km hike to the cabin with a vertical gain of 885m. They keep the trail groomed, and told us to expect to cross the previous guests who would be on their way back out from the cabin. We started on our Touring skis, with our kicker skins on them, to allow us to get up the constant incline of the trail.

We were almost at the half-way point of the trail when we reached a bridge that goes over the McKirdy Creek. That’s where we met the previous guests on their way out. They were snowshoeing and were pulling sleds with their backpacks and gear strapped to them (like we had previously planned to do). After the creek, the trail, which had been a steady incline to that point, became much steeper. Unfortunately, this meant that the partial skins on our skis didn’t have enough traction and we were slipping as we were trying to get up the inclines on the trail. Luckily, we had rented snowshoes from the owners and had strapped them to our backpacks. We switched to our snowshoes and strapped our skis to our backpacks.

It was slow going on the way up, the vertical gain was definitely a challenge. We were getting tired from the constant climb and we were mindful of the diminishing daylight. We made it to the cabin after about five hours of our combined skiing and snowshoeing. It was a relief to finally see the cabin.

The cabin is heated with a wood stove, so that was the first priority, to get a fire going. The cabin is well-equipped with a foam mattress, pots, pans, dishes, and a gas stove that’s connected to a propane tank in the outdoor basement. In the same basement area there is a hose that is stream fed, providing a year-round water source, as well as an insulated animal-proof wooden box to store your food in.

As you can see in the photo of the cabin above, there is a large picture window that fills most of the cabin with its view.

Enjoyably, there is no cell service at the cabin itself, but if there was ever some kind of emergency you just need to hike back down the trail a bit until you get a signal. There are solar panels on different parts of the cabin, which power a USB plug you can use, as well as two overhead lights in the cabin. We tried to avoid using those lights, and instead took advantage of the ambient light coming through the window.

The window above the sink in the photo above is shuttered during the winter because it faces uphill (and interestingly enough was put in after the first photo in this post was taken) and gets buried in snow, especially with the snow coming off of the roof.

Next to the cabin is the wood shed, and beyond it was the outhouse. I have to say, it was the best view I have ever had from an outhouse, and you can also get a sense as to how deep the snow was:

(The photo is a bit distorted because I took it as a vertical panorama, but you get the idea.)

So, after getting the wood stove going on our arrival, we filled up the water jug in the basement, heated up our dinner and collapsed in bed shortly thereafter.

The next morning, we took things pretty slowly. Enjoying our coffee and breakfast and staring out that lovely window.

Once our energy was high enough, we strapped the snowshoes back on and headed up the trail to the Alpine Meadow. It was about an hour and a half hike up to the meadow. With all the snow, the trees looked like they were from Dr. Seuss books.

By the time we got to the meadow, it was cloudy and there was a constant dusting of snow coming down. While we were somewhat disappointed not being able to enjoy the supposed 360 degree views of mountains from there, it was still a lovely spot to tromp around.

We headed back to the cabin for dinner and to work some more on the jigsaw puzzle we had brought with us. Pro tip: headlamps are pretty fantastic to wear while doing a jigsaw puzzle!

The next morning, we had our coffee and breakfast and packed up to head back down from the cabin. We strapped on our snowshoes and began our descent at around 10:00am. We had a good pace at the beginning as going downhill was definitely faster than going up. But, about a quarter of the way in, we could feel the leg muscles, different from the ones we had over-taxed two days ago, starting to complain. The other challenge, with the constant downward stride, was the tips of our toes hitting the ends of our boots. By the time we arrived at the McKirdy Creek, just over the half-way mark, we had definitely slowed down, and were trying to just enjoy the surroundings as we snowshoed.

We arrived back at our truck after about three hours. We stopped in to chat with the owners, and as requested, gave them an update on the supplies in the cabin, and the location of various downed trees on the trail.

Since we were able to make it back to town before Vale Coffee closed at 2:00pm, that was our first stop. It was packed with people and was quite an acoustic shock after being surrounded by nothing but silence for three days.

Being at the cabin was a lovely “reset” and a beautiful way to start the New Year. Wishing all of you all the best for 2026!