A New Castle Cabin
A New Castle Cabin
A New Castle Cabin
Halfway between Banff and Lake Louise along the Trans–Canada Highway sits the dramatic Castle Mountain. Halfway up the south face of Castle and overlooking the highway is the Goat Plateau ledge and, for the past 58 years, a small climbers’ hut. This summer, the hut was removed and replaced with a modern structure by the ACC hut maintenance team.
Erected on July 1, 1967, the 100th anniversary of Confederation, the original hut has served several generations of rock climbers. The limestone cliffs both above and below the hut have provided dozens of single and multi-pitch traditional and bolted routes on generally good rock. The hut is most often used as an overnight base before attempting routes on the upper walls, as the approach to Goat Plateau takes between three and four hours.
The original hut had a tiny floor space but that gave it a certain cozy charm, and the hut was sturdy, sound, and was witness to a great deal of local climbing history. It served its purpose well, and probably for a lot longer than its builders in the 1960s planned. It is replaced by a modern hut with eight bunks, a dedicated kitchen/eating area, and solar panels powering LED lighting and USB device charging.
The replacement hut was many years in the planning with on-site construction beginning in the summer of 2024. After a comprehensive, years-long consultation process with Parks Canada, a foundation was laid early summer and exterior construction to lockup was done in the fall.
Before and after
Woodpecker Timber Framing of Canmore built the structure, which consists of prebuilt wall and roof panels. The panels were flown up to the site in October, and the maintenance team camped out for a week putting all the pieces together. It was a busy week, which featured all kinds of weather, including an early season snowstorm one night.
Hut fixtures and furniture (bunks, table, benches, cabinets) were all built at the ACC shop in Canmore through the winter of 2024/25. Finishing work on the electrical systems of the hut and construction of the replacement outhouse took place this summer (2025).
It's all in the details
Construction timelines are always variable in the mountains as summers are short and weather can be fickle. Snow on the Goat Plateau melted late this year, and there’s an annual season in early summer when the local goat population has their kids and helicopter flights are restricted (it’s the Goat Plateau after all, we’re the visitors here). Finishing construction took place through the first part of August, and the crews and materials and tools and camp were flown out this past Wednesday (August 12).
The new hut also comes with a (slightly) new name: the Castle Mountain (Currie) Cabin. Gord Currie was President of The Alpine Club of Canada from 2014 to 2016, and the new hut was made possible by generous support from Gord and his family.
The wait is over
The Castle Mountain (Currie) Cabin is open for bookings now. Please note that this is exclusively a climbers’ cabin due to the nature of the approach: technical rock climbing with ropes is required to reach the hut.
A Blast From the Past
We know a bit about the history of the construction of the original Castle Mountain Hut from the pages of Herb and Pat Kariel’s book Alpine Huts in the Rockies, Selkirks and Purcells. We know that the hut was built as a class project by students at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology beginning in 1963 and that it was one of a pair of huts that included the much shorter-lived Graham Cooper Hut that sat in the Valley of the Ten Peaks. What we didn’t know was anything about the people who worked on the build back in the day. That is until this week.
While removing the dismantled original hut, the ACC maintenance team got the wonderful surprise of a piece of history falling quite literally into their hands. As remains of the hut were being unloaded after the flight off the mountain, a piece of loose leaf paper with the signatures of the “laborers” rolled out of one of the walls – a bit of a makeshift time capsule stuffed into the insulation almost six decades ago.
We encourage our community to read the names and if any of these former SAIT students or labourers are known to them, to let them know that their construction work was sound, and that we’ll remember their efforts. We hope our new hut lives up to the standards they set.
Rab Canada sponsors the ACC hut network.
We thank them for their support.
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