This past weekend I finally did it and went on my first Hut trip. I was looking on their website 3 or so weeks ago and saw they had 2 spots available for a Saturday night. So, I jumped on the opportunity and booked them. It took me a while to find someone to go with me, but I finally got my friend Doug to come with me, we just had to wait for him to finish with work on Saturday.
We ended up leaving the trailhead around 1:30 that day setting off on our snowshoes. I use the MSR Evo snowshoes and they are amazing .. especially on snow that has been packed down a little like the trail we were on. They don’t really affect how you walk so they are simple to get use to. It took us about 4 hours to get to the “Hut” … More like nice large cabin. Since we had gotten a late start the cabin was already really warm, full of people, and had snow melted for the water supply.
We settled in and found us some beds up in one of the three different sleeping quarters. We ended up sharing the room with an friendly older couple. The Cabin wasn’t full since a few of the people that had booked it weren’t able to make it. Which turned out to be good for me since the beds aren’t quite big enough to fit my 6’4” frame. I ended up sleeping at a diagonal across two of the mattresses.
The cabin’s are fully stocked and come with most everything you would need. About all you really have to bring along is a sleeping bag, extra clothes, flashlight, and food. They have all the pots, pans, dishes, spices, games, books, and other things that are handy. They have wood burning stoves to heat the place, propane stoves to cook on, and this one had solar panels that powered the lights at night.
The hike out the next day was amazing. Being the hike out it mostly downhill so far easier and allowed us to enjoy it a lot more. The views were plentiful and beautiful. It was a little windy but as long as you have a good wind jacket it doesn’t bother you much. It even got warm enough that I was just wearing my short sleeve shirt down the second half of it. Doug even had his shirt off for half of it. Quite the nice warm weather to top off a great trip.
All in all my GPS shows it was 6.2 miles each way with 1,300 feet of elevation gain. It wasn’t an easy trip but wasn’t difficult. Just about Moderate as the books all say.
Code_Joe 