The original outhouse at the UBC Varsity Outdoor Club’s Harrison Hut was built 30 years ago and needed replacing badly — built among huge glacier boulders, there was no soil suitable for digging, and it has repeatedly been invaded by marmots (or as VOC members call them, “shit beavers”). In 2014, the FMCBC awarded them a Member Club Grant to build a new outhouse, but first they had to decide on a design (you can read about their process in the Spring/Summer edition of Cloudburst).
Finally deciding on the “traditional option” of a “25 year hole,” the crew got to work prefabbing and painting the new outhouse in a backyard in Vancouver. Over the summer, it was ferried and driven up to Pemberton (and beyond) over several trips.
“Outhouses are not a sexy topic, but with a bit of humour one can usually convince people to work on them,” said Clemens Adolphs from the VOC.
He also noted that in an effort make the new outhouse impermeable to the destructive “shit beaver” the crew wrapped a 26 inch sheet of aluminium around the bottom and coated the structure in industrial-strength grey paint.
Learn more about the VOC here, as well as their member grant project from last summer to renovate their popular Mt. Brew Hut in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor.
