Skinner Hut, Feb 2006

We decided to ski into a hut. I'm not the most proactive hut planner, but I found that as of December, there was plenty of space at Skinner Hut. It's the longest inbound ski in the hut system, at something like 11 miles from the Turquoise Lake trailhead. (Litz's hut book says 8.6 miles, but that seems to be a typo.) We left frigid Evergreen Saturday morning at 5:30; Aaron's car refused to start entirely. My car's door were frozen shut, but we managed to crawl in the windows. `We' = me from Boulder, Amy from Evergreen, and Aaron & Marci who'd driven up from Santa Fe.

The trailhead's near Leadville. We were plannin' it to be pretty darn chilly up there ('Weather is expected to be bitterly cold all weekend, with 45-50 mph winds...'), but it was a whole lot warmer there than in Evergreen. We cut off a mile or two by skiin' straight across the lake, rather than competing with snow-machines for the trail. There were a few ice scares (soggy ice and some cracks), but we managed to make it across.

We spent two nights at the hut, playing around for the day in the middle. We headed in the general direction of Hagerman Pass (~2 miles) on the layover, but got distracted by the steep, deep powder en route. A couple more inches dumped on us overnight. Taking that as an invitation, we dropped through the trees straight down to the lake on the return, rather than taking the slightly more lesiurely trail.

Amy's got some sweet photos on her website, too.

Run Slideshow (medium-sized images) -- recommended

Run Slideshow (big images)

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