On a spring day in 1948, five young men in their early 20s met on Mount Seymour in North Vancouver.
By the time they set off to hike down through the forest they had made a pact: They would build a cabin on the mountain that summer and another the following summer. And they did.
With the 26th annual Pioneer Skiers Reunion coming up Sept. 19 at Cypress Creek Lodge, Ross Regan is reminiscing in his West Vancouver home, going back through 70 years of memories to the cabin they would call God’s Little Acre.
Ross and Bill Johnstone hiked into the Goldie Lake area on the mountain to find a location for the cabin they intended to build. Bill Dawson, Greg Prothman and Gordy Clark, also from Vancouver, had the same idea.
“We did not know one another. None of us knew anything about building cabins. We did know we’d be better off working together,” Ross explains.
Their agreement confirmed with handshakes all round, the five young men set to work.
An annual fee of $25 and a floor plan secured the leases for each cabin. The cabin floor plan included three entrances: a trap door in the main floor, the front door and a window in the sleeping loft.
“You needed that top entrance when new snow fell on top of the snow already there. It could be 20 feet or more,” Ross says.
His photographs show the cabin so buried in snow that only the top of the stove pipe is visible.
With their leases secured and a plan in place, the five embarked on six months of back-breaking labour.
“We were eager to do it, to be on the mountain. You couldn’t keep us away,” he notes.
They devised their own building methods, using a winch and pulley system to lift the logs and steel pegs to join them. The logs were lifted into position and marked where the saddle notches would be placed, then lowered to the ground, notches cut and raised back up so the pegs could be driven in. Laborious and time consuming, yes, but the result was worth the effort.
Before the actual construction, however, trees had to be felled and skinned. “We had to drop the trees when the pitch was running. Otherwise, the bark stuck to the tree and it was too hard to cut,” he says.
Realizing that using hand axes and cross-cut saws would take up precious time, they rented a chain saw, at a cost of five dollars, to fell the trees required over one weekend.
The park ranger, aghast at the jumble of trees and branches, was sure more trees had been cut than were needed. In fact, the number of logs required and cut was planned and exact.
Ross remembers the next step, preparing the logs, removing the branches and bark, was the hardest work the five young men had ever done.
Harder even than packing their tools, equipment and supplies from the Mushroom parking lot, to the cabin site, a two-hour hike along the Old Buck Trail.
They packed in a cast iron stove weighing 450 pounds. One of the group removed the burner plates to lighten the load. When the stove was finally in place in the cabin’s kitchen, using their winch and pulley log lifting system, the plates were found in the oven, his idea of a joke.
It’s not possible to convey in words the effort required to build the cabin.
It would be like trying to describe the smell of the pine trees and the crisp winter air, the exhilaration of skiing the mountain, and the camaraderie of the North Shore cabin communities.
“It started with a handshake and became close friendships that continued throughout our lives. Now, the cabins are gone and I’m the only one left to remember what we did.”
Thankfully, Ross made a documentary about building the cabin, available on YouTube. Here we have photographs of the process from start to finish and a glimpse of the friendships that were forged. Find it by entering “Ross Regan” or “Building Our Log Cabin on Mount Seymour in 1948.”
The cabins on Hollyburn, and the restored Hollyburn Lodge, also exist on the District of West Vancouver’s Community Heritage Register. The Mount Seymour cabins are mostly gone now but the stories remain, collected by Alex Douglas for his Mount Seymour History Project.
Stories of cabin life are a legacy unique to the North Shore. It’s time to collect and preserve those stories, and for a new generation to make their own mountain memories. We can begin by joining the Pioneer Skiers at their reunion.
The annual Pioneer Skiers Reunion will be held at Cypress Creek Lodge Sept. 19 from noon to 4 p.m. Find details at the Hollyburn Heritage Society website at hollyburnheritage.ca or at the Mount Seymour History Project website at mtseymourhistory.com.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. Contact her at 778-279-2275 or email her at [email protected].
