Polar Bear Teatime

What people expect to hear after you tell them that you’ve gone on a two day, one night hut trip in the remote (ish) mountains near Aspen with a ~6 mile ski in:

It was a cold, blistering hike in, and our huge puffy down jackets did not suffice in keeping out the cold. Visibility was approximately 2 inches, and snow was moving parallel to the ground. It took us 15 hours to ski the 6 miles through two feet of fresh powder, and when we finally reached the hut, we all collapsed in exhaustion, eating our meger freeze dried meals and thimble full of wiskey. (On a less fun note, two of my coworkers did experience a hut trip like this in mid December. Ouch.)

What actually happened on our two day, one night hut trip at McNamara hut near Aspen:

It was an toasty day, with the cloudless sky making the 35°F high feel more like 70°F; we skied almost all day in t-shirts. The views all around us were specular, and the hiking pleasant… once we realized that we should just leave our skins on. We got to the hut in about 5 hours, though we were only moving about half that time due to a relaxing lunch, multiple skin changes, and a bathroom break (quite a tricky endeavor when your legs sink completely into the snow when you take your skis off). When we got to the hut, the last party had left us a huge pot half full of melted snow, and we quickly began preparing our feast of pasta with pesto, grilled veggies, and sun-dried tomatoes and sipping on our water bottles full of red and white wine, whiskey (ewww!), and uber-tasty beer.

Overall, the trip was a huge success. We all had a great time on the hike up to the hut, stopping frequently for pictures, food, and skins. Ryan and I were both using familiar equipment, though I had left my boots in Denver and had to rent from Ute Mountain in Aspen. Megan, Nicole and Jeff were all using rental equipment from REI; at first, Ryan and I were questioning the quality of the skins - which looked like they were from the 80s - but after working with the equipment, we were quite pleased in the quality.

We hiked in on Feb 12th, finally getting away from the car at 12:20pm. We had a tough time on the first quarter miles on the way to the hunter creek trail head, but once we put on our skins, things smoothed out a bit. We saw several people in the first couple miles of the trip, and one was nice enough to point out that we were on the secondary route to the hut, rather than the primary. We did some quick mobile phone browsing (yes, 3G signal!) and found out that we had continued along hunter’s creek rather than taking the red mountain road out of the valley. We quickly corrected with a mere 200m backtrack, and started up again on the right path, saving us from the miserable untracked switchbacks further up hunters creek.

We stopped for lunch along the even graded red mountain road, and then continued up into Van Horn Park, reaching the meadows of the lower and upper saddles to find a beautiful view of Aspen behind us. We noticed some ski tracks on the way up that we made sure to sample the next day on the way down.

After reaching the upper Van Horn Park saddle, we had a bit over 2 miles left to go until the hut, though we had already finished most of our climbing. The last 2 miles meandered through the woods, with occasional glimpses of the parallel valley and setting sun. We made it to the hut just after sunset (still light!) to much fanfare and cheering.

Once inside the hut, we began preparing for the night: changing into our clean, warm clothes; bringing in snow to melt for water; boiling said water for sanitation (unless your name starts with an “R” and ends with a “yan”); preparing our tasty pasta dinner; sipping on wine and whiskey (with the highlight being hot cocoa and a dab of whiskey); playing cards; packing for the next day; attempting some star gazing only to be ruined by a near full moon (though any early morning bathroom breakers got a beautiful glimpse of the stars without the moon).

The next morning, Ryan and I woke up before sunrise to sample the pleasures of Bald Knob, the nearest backcountry skiing to our hut. While the skiing was decent and enjoyable, though not as steep as desired, the views at the top of the Knob where the best part of the outing. After finishing the hike up, we spent 20 or 30 minutes taking photos from several perspectives and enjoying the panoramic view as the sun moved further above the horizon.

When we got back to the hut, the remaining crew members had already started on our breakfast of breakfast burritos and bacon, a hard breakfast to beat. After packing up all of our belongings and our significant amount of remaining food, cleaning the hut, and bidding adieu to our two hut friends, we finally got the skis on at 9:50am, and started on the ~6 mile ski back to Aspen.

The hike back was far easier than the hike up. The first 2 miles back to the saddle were a rolling up and down, with a steep decent along a narrow treed trail just before reaching the open meadows. After reaching the meadows, it was almost a strait coast back to the bottom of Red Mountain Road, with a couple breaks for group pictures. Jeff, Nicole and Megan had a competition to see who could take the most falls on the way down (seems backwards, doesn’t it?), which I believe Megan won with 11 falls, beating out Jeff and Nicole.

It turned out to be a great first hut trip for Jeff and Megan, and a great second for Nicole, Ryan and myself. Ryan, Nicole and I have another hut trip planned at the Friends hut in early March, though it’ll be a bit more intense, with 80 miles of skiing over three days planned in prep for our upcoming Elk Mountain Grand Traverse.

Extras

Some statistics taken from My Tracks (though I had to do some cleaning up in Google Earth due to jumpy GPS signals)

A link to my picasa album for the trip.

A link to Ryan's flickr album of the trip. I’m impatiently waiting to see the film shots he took with his awesome Holga camera.