The Greatest Day Outside!
I think the one of the greatest days I’ve had outdoors was this past winter on our annual hut trip. Every year a group of us reserves one of the 10th Mountain Division Huts in the mountains of Colorado. We reserve the entire hut, so sixteen of us get to spend three glorious days together. This past February we skied into a hut called Fowler-Hilliard. The hut is straight east from Camp Hale. Camp Hale was a large military outpost that housed over 6000 soldiers during WWII. It sits in a wide open valley nestled between Tennessee Pass north of Leadville and Battle Mountain near Vail. It is most famous for the 10th Mountain Division, an elite group of soldiers that trained in cross country and downhill skiing, winter/mountain survival techniques, and combat throughout the winter of 1943-1944. The division was deployed to Italy in January to try and penetrate the German lines in the northern Italian Alps. This is where we started our trip.
The ski in was typical of other hut trips; a long gradual uphill slog on a snowmobile road, followed by a steep 2hr climb up a narrow valley, ending at tree line in a beautiful open bowl. Skiing uphill with skins, wearing a 40lb pack, and breaking trail in three feet of fresh powder is quite the workout. But that’s why we love it. Burning thousands of calories means that you get to eat a HUGE dinner. (What do you think we’re carrying in those 40lb packs!) Lots of food!
After a night of eating, drinking, laughing, and some sleeping, we got up at 7am and started breakfast. Oatmeal was the dish of choice; fast and easy with lots of carbohydrates. Why waste time cooking when there was skiing to be had.
We were out the door by 8:30am. It had snowed a foot overnight and was still dumping. We found some incredible runs down slopes that were 25-28 degrees. The snow conditions were fairly dangerous for avalanches, and we weren’t about to take any chances. A 25 degree slope is a total hero pitch. Steep enough to make lots of great turns, but gentle enough to be safe from slides.
We spent the next nine hours skiing run after run after run. Each one was better than the last. And every run was through gorgeous freshly fallen snow. There is something surreal about being the first one down a slope, sinking in above your knees, and making turns in so much snow you can’t see. I’m a tele skier and the leg burn you get from this kind of run is almost unbearable. Occasionally I would just fall over into the fluff, unable to do another deep knee bend, laughing my head off, and tears streaming down my face. It never stopped snowing all day, so we kept moving, almost racing each other back up to the top to see who could get the most untracked snow. By 5pm we decided to call it quits. The light was disappearing quickly, and the legs were turning to mush. We were completely exhausted. What an amazing day. Getting to ski the best powder of my life with my crazy friends in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and burning 5000 calories, well that’s about as good as it gets!