Our final group project centred on the potential for new development of backcountry huts within the Pemberton-Lillooet area. As this area is well known for a wide range of sporting, leisure and tourism activities it is a prime area for a new hut to be constructed. Therefore all areas which followed this criteria were deemed acceptable for construction:
- The hut must be at an elevation between 1,200 and 1,800m above sea level.
- The hut must be at least 2km away from an existing hut.
- The hut must be within walking distance (less than 2km away) of a peak higher than 2,200m.
- The hut must have scenic views (must be less than 500m away from a lake).
These criteria were mapped and we were then able to determine which areas within the suggested region were suitable for development. The group report can be found here.
Group projects are always a challenge, but we designated everyone enough work to do so that no-one was massively freeloading on everyone else. A couple of us took part in taking the idea to a place where it was usable (i.e finding the correct data to use and modifying it so it could be used). Then others took the construction of the map, which took two lab sessions to fully complete. Afterwards, the write-up of the project was split up with people who had done more physical mapping taking less writing, while those who had done less mapping, wrote more.
Things I’ve learned from the group project
- Never leave it all to the last minute- if you’ve got to hand it in in two hours time and a group member hasn’t gotten back to you with their section it can make the experience very stressful.
- There is a large range of backcountry huts within the Pemberton-Lillooet region, which made finding similarities challenging, meaning that the criteria used may not be particularly great.
- It was helpful that the TRIM data was on the geography departments system, so check first if UBC has the data you want before trying to download it yourself!