Hut Trip

This trip took place on Nov 20^th but I only uploaded the pics now so here is the trip report.

On Nov 20th I woke up to blue skies and the forecast saying that snow was on it's way over the next few days. I decided to call up my backcountry skiing partner Alex Curry to see if he would be up for skinning into a hut that I had been told about earlier in the year for an overnighter and possibly killer turns the next morning. He agreed and a little less than one hour later Alex, Mosley(golden retriever), and I were on our way to the trailhead. When we arrived at the trailhead we were shocked to see more cars parked than ever before. This got us worried that another party might have had the same idea as us but we were fine with sharing with another group of skiers if that meant meeting new people. We started skinning up the trail at about 11:30 carrying way too much food and just about the perfect amount of beer on the top of my pack. The skin into the hut only took 2 hours but we were ready to be there. When we arrived we found that there wasn't much wood in the wood storage bin so we spent an hour or so getting enough wood to last us well into the night. By the time we had a fire going in the stove, Bob Marley jamming on the stereo, a beer opened, and a game of chess started the snow was falling faster and faster. Beer after beer was opened along with a book that was left at the cabin by Lou Dawson called, “Wild Snow”. The book was filled with pictures of crazy backcountry ski destinations all over North America. After eating a dinner of speghetti and reading some more next to the fire I headed up into the loft to fall asleep. The fire was still going so it was pretty hot up in the loft but 3 hours later it was gettin to be cold again. I ended up waking up at 5:30 totally awake and not able to sleep anymore so I built another fire and sat by it for a few hours with Mosley before Alex got out of bed. When Alex got out of bed he put together a breakfast of hash browns that ended up a bit crunchier than ideal but still filled me up so it was ideal. After messing around for an hour more we finally got our ski gear on and skinned out of the hut to the other side of the ridge for a quick ski to the base of the skin track. We found out that the snow wasn't quit as good as we though it would be. The wind had created a very crisp layer on the top of the snow that was almost unbreakable in places and in other places you would sink up to your shins. Very unpredictable snow so we decided to skin back up to the hut and grab the gear we had left and head out along the ridge looking for place to drop into the trees. When we gained the ridge we found out just how bad the avalanche danger was. As I looked back to watch Alex skin along the ridge a slab broke that was probably 1½ ft thick and 20 feet wide. After that scare we made our way to the top of the ridge and followed it until we were into very thick trees on shallow terrain. We skied the shallow terrain in the trees making some of the best turns of the whole trip all the way down to the road that we followed out to the car. This was a great trip as far as the hut goes but the only thing that didn't cooperate with us were the snow conditions. We had brutal wind the whole time that pushed even the deepest snow into nothing but a sheet of ice above treeline and made for very high avalanche danger. It looks like I'm going to have to visit this hut again once the snow pack gets stronger and the wind relaxes and little bit. Good trip nonetheless!!

-Owen Darrow