One day, Larry Dolecki’s son told him he wanted to build a hut on Grotto Mountain near their home in Canmore.
And then he also told his dad that we wanted to build a trail connecting his hut with Daddy’s hut, located about 150 km northwest of Grotto in British Columbia.
A child’s imagination has a way of simply evaporating distance and logistics.
That Grotto Mountain hut was never built, but dreaming big did result in other huts built along backcountry routes in the Rockies.
It could be said that a vivid imagination coupled with a can-do attitude is hereditary, especially for Albertans.
If so, then this mini-Dolecki has size XL boots to follow.
His mountain guide dad has created a backcountry skiing experience in the Rockies east of Kinbasket Lake in BC like no other in Canada.
Larry’s staff like to call it Larry Land. It started to take shape more than 20 years ago.
“I looked at maps, then hiked around in the summer. It looked great – snow, access, tree skiing. What really got me was the big broken glaciers,” he said in a story published last year in Mountain Life Media. “Tree skiing is great, but when you get the conditions and weather, it’s great to get into big alpine terrain.”
Larry’s homework paid off.
His tenure boasts massive mountains, including 3,498-metre Mount Lyell (consisting of five distinct peaks named after famed Swiss mountain guides and brothers and intricate and complicated glaciers and steep, forested slopes pockmarked with cliffs. And now the mountain is home to alpine huts, which keep multiplying.
Why Stop at One?
Larry’s empire began with Icefall Lodge in 2005 with his then-business partner and fellow mountain guide Jim Gudjonson.
After Gudjonson exited the partnership, Larry forged ahead with his dream of providing a Euro-style hut-to-hut experience.
Next came Lyell Hut, a tin can cabled to a rocky bench above the southwest Lyell Glacier built in 2013, followed by the Mons, a slightly more luxurious tin can.
Not satisfied, Larry built the Alexandra and the Rostrum huts, cozy post-and-beam wooden two-story beauties completed in 2020. In the summer of 2022, Larry buttoned up his latest backcountry build called Waterfall Lodge, which he envisions as mostly a base for ice climbing.
“My vision was to offer a hut-to-hut experience like you get in the Swiss Alps,” Larry said.
Spring is the season for big alpine ski traverses. That’s when Dolecki offers guided, multiday trips among the big mountains, starting with a heli-drop at the Mons Hut. If weather and conditions allow for it, you can string together the Mons, Lyell, and Alexander huts, pop over a pass to the plush Icefall Lodge, and finish Rostrum Hut.
Pierre Hungr, a professional guide who frequently works with Dolecki, says what the operation lacks in chocolate-on-the-pillows luxury, it makes up for with big and challenging terrain.
For example, take the ‘Wild West,’ an aptly named run down a steep, crevassed glacier from the Lyell Group that has become a bucket list ski for Dolecki’s guests.
“When you guide clients down the Wild West in perfect corn snow under bluebird skies, it’s mind-blowing. You can’t get that experience anywhere else in Canada,” Hungr says.
And with a history of building new backcountry huts, maybe mini-Dolecki will have his Grotto hut one day—things do tend to get done in Larry Land.
