Our Shasta Springs Trout Camp now has an award-winning outhouse, “TroutHouse”. TroutHouse took home 3 awards from the 2017 Pasadena & Foothill AIA Design Awards, including People’s Choice! Inspired by the first architectural idea, the primitive hut, this small 10’ x 17’ pavilion is built entirely from sustainably- harvested incense cedar trees sourced onsite. While elevating the primitive nature of camping by providing an exquisite accessible open view shower and toilet room experience, TroutHouse looks to its natural setting as the source of perfect beauty.
The 170 sq-ft piece was completed in September 2016 by Design Architect Mark Gangi, Engineer Hong Tam, and CalTrout’s Craig Ballenger serving as General Contractor. The project was an intense collaboration of all involved. Every detail, log, and method was discussed at length with the team. The high level of craft resulted from the collaboration and the shared belief that we were building something special in a sacred place.
The TroutHouse has greatly enhanced the visitor experience at Trout Camp. It invites campers and non-campers alike to a luxurious experience while maintaining its mission of immersion in nature to advocate for the preservation and restoration of our rivers and watersheds.
Eight log columns support log entablatures and pediments which were painstakingly scoured and fit together with hidden structural hardware. The trees that were used for the construction were scheduled to be removed to complywith CalFire requirements. Bark was stripped onsite in the winter when the sap was frozen and the logs were placed on sleepers to dry for a year. Flat basalt stones at the entrance were sourced during the road construction. Large andesite viewing rocks that were pitched out of an eruption of Mt. Shasta over two centuries ago, are followed by the entrance path and worked into the deck design. In the center of six of the columns is an open cedar cask, which houses an accessible toilet and sink entered by a curved door at its axial entrance. Beyond the cask and between its columns on the western entrance is the shower, which flows from the kingpost between the two columns. Here the deck rotates at a 45-degree angle and has two privacy walls which block views to the shower, while creating an open view of the forest for the showered. Two cut logs provide seating and alert of a grade change at the open end of the shower area. The TroutHouse is fed by onsite spring water and illuminated by indirect LED lighting.
Trout Camp is set on 38 acres of private land on the Upper Sacramento River, where its guests live an outdoor lifestyle in complete physical immersion in nature. Small sleeping cabins are delicately arrayed in a north south axis while the TroutHouse is the western endcap to the outdoor kitchen living room on the east west axis.
