16’x16′ Fly-In Cabin

Fly-In Fort. It’s not every day you get to break in a new backcountry hut. So when I had the opportunity to be on the first ever trip to B.C.’s Snowfall Lodge, I leapt at the chance—my friend Lane Clark even quit his carpentry job and made a last-minute dash to join me. We arrived at Shelter Bay, a 30-minute drive south of Revelstoke, British Columbia, just in time to catch our ferry. Snowfall is the latest powder playground built by legendary fly-in hut baron and guide Larry Dolecki, who’s also the proprietor of Icefall, Lyell, and Mons huts, farther to the east, in the Canadian Rockies near Golden. Now Snowfall Lodge gives him a stake in the Selkirk Mountains, just south of famed Rogers Pass. The helicopter picks us up at the end of a logging road in the forest “town” of Beaton, where there are only two permanent residents. We’re pressed against the drainage of the Incomappleux River here, whose name is a hacked rendition of the French for “Oh, how it rains.” Except in winter, of course. The week that follows gives us great stability and mostly clear weather in which to shred the previous week’s storm snow. The lodge itself, which was flown into place, was installed in a single week in October.