Brew Hut
Winter access: 6.5 hrs
Hut fee: $10 per person per night
About Brew Hut
About Brew Hut
This hut was built in 2005 and sits at 1686 m on an exposed alpine ridge just south of Mt. Brew. It sleeps about 12 people comfortably, but it has fit as many as 20. The hut is open to non-motorized, non-commercial users.
The Brew area receives huge amounts of snow in winter and is a popular destination for backcountry skiing. In summer, hikers visit the heather meadows around Brew Lake, swim in the tarns, and walk up nearby Mt. Brew.
The hut has a wood stove (winter use only), a solar-powered light, and an outhouse. Firewood should be used sparingly, because it is carried in by volunteers. There are small tarns west of the hut for drinking water (no swimming!), although in winter it is sometimes necessary to melt snow. For more information, see the VOC Wiki.
How to get there
Turn onto Chance Creek FSR from Hwy 99 (1.8 km south of the Garibaldi Rubble Creek turnoff). The road is rough but passable for 2WD vehicles. In winter, park in the ploughed parking lot at km 1.6, shared with snowmobilers and Powder Mtn Catskiing. Continue up the road and keep right at major junctions. In summer, park at the new bridge over Roe Creek (km 5.9). For the next 2.5 km, the road is heavily deactivated and is slow travel on skis (but fine in summer). Stay right at major junctions until the trail leaves the road in a cutblock (50.00728, -123.18716; easy to miss). Walk through the forest to Brew Lake, then follow gentle slopes northwest then north to a col. The hut is just east of the col.
In winter, this route is 13.2 km and 1300 m elevation gain. In summer, it is 9.0 km and 990 m elevation. The last section of trail is in open subalpine terrain, is unmarked, and is covered by snow well into the summer. Whiteout conditions are common in every season, and you should have a GPS or be proficient navigating with a map and compass to reach the hut. In winter and spring, there are a few short sections of avalanche terrain.
2022 Brew GPS track
Conditions reports
New reportJuly 22-23, 2022 Morgan Cooper
Driving:
Chance Creek FSR to Roe Creek Bridge: passable in 2WD with care, no problem in my 2009 Subaru Forester
Past Roe Creek Bridge: we did not attempt as it is full of water bars and has been deactivated right before the beautiful bridge (sigh...) but we did see a Toyota Forerunner that made it all the way to the cutblock
Hiking: TH is very very easy to miss (we did), a future work hike to clear underbrush and mark the right turn off the FSR. Trail is otherwise in OK condition, some minor bushwacking needed below treeline. Mosquitos were atrocious on the FSR and through the trees, better in the alpine. Didn't make it to the hut, lake is still mostly frozen. Patches of snow on the trail are minor before the lake, snow melt and creek runoff creates muddy and wet patches.
July 22, 2022
All cars we saw this weekend got parked before the bridge. Maybe some 4*4 can drive pass the bridge till the junction with R200, but not on R200, as it was blocked. Buggy in the forest, but not on the top. Spotty snow on the boulders(tricky but manageable), boots were good enough all the way up. We didn't use or check the hut, as it was packed with a large friendly family group when we arrived. The older outhouse was full. Beautiful weather great views. I was so surprised seeing 4 snowmobiles drove around the hut though...
July 2, 2022
Roe Creek Road in good shape until the bridge (branch R100). We parked there due to impassable ditches across the road. Road is melted up to branch R200. From there we skin up (there are multiple spots where you have to carry skis). Trail have a good snow coverage and is well marked. In hut is still enough fire wood, few sleeping mats and two luxury pillows!
May 22, 2022
We made it to the hut in 7 hours with lots of breaks, hut in a good condition, just the axe needs to be replaced as it is difficult cut wood with the one at the cabin. Had a great time!
April 30, 2022
Our visit went smooth. We got 1/3 of the trail/gravel road by car, the rest by skies/split board. Even thought the trail was not used for couple of days, still find our way up easily.
Hut was clean and cozy. We repaired book shelve and tune the guitar.
Thank you for nice memories !
April 24, 2022
Can drive to ~1km past the roe creek/chance creek junction. Alternate between slushy skinning and walking for ~1km before putting on skins permanently. Only one small creek crossing on the way up, but more opening up soon. Hut is in great shape.
April 10, 2022
We parked about 1km before the new bridge (summer parking spot) due to snow. we where a mixed group skiers and snow showers and it took us 5 hours to get tot he hut. Trail was in good conditions no problems. We had a late lunch in the hut and did a small tour around the lake in the evening great weather, about 10cm of nice snow on top and snow pack on the gentle slopes we skied was stable. The hut was in good condition no issues, one other group of 4 arrived late in the day. On Sunday weather was overcast, we summited Mt Brew and skied out the snow pack at lower elevations was hard and crusty. Thanks VOC for the great hut.
April 9, 2022
Snow was skiable from about 1km up from the Clear creek/roe creek fork, and would be easy to drive to this point. We broke trail after turning off the roe creek rd which was quite chewed up by snowmobiles. Coverage was excellent with only a couple exposed streams on the way. Hut was in good condition, no evidence of rodents. One notable item was that the outhouse door seemed to have expanded a little and was unable to be latched shut. Fair bit of recent avalanche activity in the area, we stuck to low angle terrain.
April 6, 2022
The bridge is back in over Roe Creek! No wading required, but also lots of snowmobile traffic on that section now. Trail markers were easy to follow after the logging road, the transition point from road to trail took a bit of route finding but any trail app (we used Gaia and Fatmap) showed the way easily. Hut was in great shape, no problems.
March 5, 2022
Logging road was well compacted from the catski machines. We were able to skin/ski over half of the water bars. VOCO left us a nice skin track to follow, so navigation was easy. The hut was in good shape, except I don't think the last group swept before they left. There are 4-5 thin blue mats that serve well as butt insulation on the benches or emergency sleeping pad if someone forgot theirs. With the wood stove, 4 VOCers were plenty comfy in -20C. Outhouse in good condition. Yellow pee everywhere on the pee side of the hut, mainly because we didn't get much fresh snow while we were up there. Please bring an extra garbage bag for hut floor sweepings instead of chucking bits of dirt and plastic and who knows what else outside. Plenty of firewood left, but we used it conservatively. We made sure to shut the hut door quickly to not loose heat. The solar light works well. The storage area could use some tiding and cleaning. There are 2-4 hut booties, leftover wool socks, and cheap sleepbag
Feb. 26, 2022
After reading other trip reviews and having hiked to Brew Hut last May via the old Brandywine entrance, we figured this hike would be totally doable. However, with 40lbs on our backs it took us 9 hours to reach the hut, and we were beyond exhausted. Then we faced a whiteout this morning when we left the hut to ride out. It took us 6h to get to the parking lot after riding down the Roe Ck FSR.
Great weekend, but not for the faint of heart!
Feb. 7, 2022
The logging road was pretty chewed up from snowmobiles but wasn’t too bad for skinning. Ran into very bad trail conditions once we got onto the Roe Creek Trail. Skin track was melted out and/or very icy in spots. Had to bootpack through some sections which made our trip take a lot longer than planned. Made it to the hut after dark. Hut was in great shape and there was lots of wood to get the fire going. Despite the inversion and some aspects having a pretty good melt crust we found great snow on W to SW aspects. A few pockets of wind slab could be found but nothing major. Totally worth the hike up. Thanks to all the volunteers who keep the hut up and running. Cheers.
Jan. 28, 2022
Nothing is broken, the trail is covered with snow from the Roe winter parking lot trail head, need to have snowshoes. It is great condition trail.
Jan. 23, 2022
Weekend of Jan 22/23. Started our skin from the parking lot at freeman lake (49.969472, -123.166511) There's a large mound of snow that made heading up the FSR on skis the only option. ~7h50m up via Roe Creek Trail at a mellow pace with lots of breaks along the way. The road was brutal to skin up, just overall unpleasant chunky and hard snow. Exactly what we expected. Our experience sounds similar to Emily's on Jan 15/16.
Snow got significantly better for skinning near Brew Lake. Mediocre at best for skiing.
Took us 1h40m down. Quick pace and did not put on our skins. Shuffled up the uphill portions of the FSR which saved a ton of time. Would recommend.
Jan. 23, 2022
Headed up to Brew Hut for an overnight trip weekend of Jan 15/16 2022. We knew the conditions would be bad going in (warm, high freezing level, and lots of rain the previous week), so weren't expecting much skiing, and thus were not disappointed.
FSR was reasonable. Some tricky-ish creek crossings just before the summer parking lot (only had to bootpack one). Forest section was a hard, icy, debris-filled mess. Lake and ridge ascent were crusty with a dusting of new snow on top. Had to dig out the hut and woodshed (and un-jam the frozen outhouse door). Of the 22 people booked that night, only our group of 4 made it up. Hut was tidy, lots of wood, tuned up the guitar.
Descent was a mess. Left the skins on for a significant portion, as the snow was so packed and icy that you couldn't really ski. Saw one other group of 2 attempting the trail, plus lots of snowmobiles on the FSR. Up in 8 hr, down in 4 hr. Good workout, bad skiing.
Jan. 15, 2022
Our group headed into the hut on December 31st under cold, sunny conditions to find skin track to the hut, and we passed a group of two heading out. The new Roe Bridge is in place and travel for our group was good. We found the hut and privy to be dug out. We used firewood sparingly, and found the hut to be cozy during our stay, thank you to those volunteers that have carried in firewood! Snow was generally wind affected around the hut, but we found good tree skiing on south facing trees north of hut, and Baldwin's trees south of hut. We headed out January 1st in stormy conditions and did not see any groups parked or en route to hut when we exited. We expect the skin track will be fully covered now after the 80cm+ storm that followed our exit.
Despite having a Coleman stove expert with us, we were unable to get the Coleman stove working. There appears to be a leak or frozen blockage connecting the gas to the element. We cleaned and removed some accumulated items from the hut.
Dec. 31, 2021
We chose to reframe our failure to get to the hut as "exercise, and training breaking trail with an overnight pack." We turned back at the summer lot once it became apparent that our pace (1km/h) was not going to get us to the hut at a decent time and decided to come back when there is not as much snow. 200 branch is still heavily de-activated, but we confirmed that there is a brand new bridge over Roe Creek.
Dec. 18, 2021
The new bridge over Roe Creek was getting installed this past weekend. The guys said they would keep working until it was done. There were two excavators at the creek and the bridge was mostly constructed, but not in place yet. I would suspect it will be in place by next weekend. The construction workers thought we were a little nuts when we forded the creek in our boot shells. Creek was not more than mid calf deep.
We did check out the cable on the way home but the pull lines were underwater and very tangled in alder downstream so we just walked back across the river instead.
There is still a huge pile of dirt and several log blockades at the R200 turnoff.
We had about 40-50 cm of new snow over the weekend, so coverage was a lot better on the way down, but still had some rock sharks in the forest.
Dec. 12, 2021
Trail is hard to follow in snow as people would already know, took us 14 hours to get to the hut, was only around -1 degrees, clear night, was nice, hut was amazing. Brought a bit more firewood inside, nothing broken as far as we could tell, everything working fine. 1 Outhouse was locked, other was fine.
Nov. 23, 2021
On the way in, the road was driveable to the river crossing. Crossing the river was just under hip height as of November 7th. Cold and fast moving, but with careful footing crossable ~50 m upstream of the road . Option to use the tyrolean ~50 m downstream, or just use it to send your bags across. Trail was dusted in snow on the way up which made travel across the talus fields slow. Post-holing began just after the last talus field (~3 - 4 ft of snow), skinneable from there. Creeks are still open but mostly crossable if you pick the right location. The group prior to us left the outhouse door open and snow covered the TP ash burning bin - as such, one of our group members didn't notice it and put TP down the toilet - we apologize for this. Otherwise the hut is in good condition. While it was whiteout and difficult to see the surroundings, there is a lot of snow in the alpine. Terrain is likely snow ski-able around the hut. ~2 ft of snow overnight make skiing down to the end possible.
Nov. 7, 2021