Hut Trip report: Day One

Early Friday morning, I awoke at the condo of my friend Tim's family, having driven to Breckenridge late the night before. As Tim, Doug (a friend of Tim's), Ted (a friend of mine), and I prepped ourselves for the drive to the trailhead, the news came through: I-70, that singular artery through the state of Colorado, was closed at Vail Pass as crews blasted away the avalanche-prone snow that had dropped overnight.

Vail Pass lay between Breckenridge and our trailhead.

We settled into the couches.... to wait for the pass to open. Every few minutes, Tim called the Highway Hotline, where we listened to a man with a remarkably soothing voice deliver the same recorded report: closed. Doug snoozed. Ted and Tim chatted. We heard from other members of our group who were coming from every quadrant of the compass rose. All were affected by the delay.

Finally, Frank Sinatra of the Highway Hotline snapped us to action with the opening of the road. Five minutes later, we zipped in Tim's car towards Eagle, CO. An hour and a half later, after a little incident involving a ditch, two local guys who looked barely old enough to drive, a broken tie-down strap, and a very nice State Park ranger with a sturdy chain (who just so happened to be packing a Glock!), we joined the rest of our crew at the Yeoman Creek Trailhead.

Ted and Tim at the trailhead

Fourteen of us total strung along the Fulford Road, passable at this time of year only by snowmobiles, skiers, and other forms of snow travel. Some of the group had arrived to the trailhead and left already, concerned that they may need more time to get to the hut, and knowing that we were getting started late. Ted and Tim set a blazing pace. I tucked myself into their draft, and soon found myself at the head of our nordic peloton.
That's when the blue blazes, our guiding lights, turned to will-o-the-wisps, and disappeared. Never were we truly lost (our skin tracks through the snow were like the proverbial bread crumbs), but it seemed that every time I looked to the southwest, the sun had inexplicably dropped several more notches in the sky, and we were no closer to the hut. With the bit in their teeth, Tim and Brett, fresh in from Hawai'i, forged ahead through the fresh powder. Occasionally a flash of blue would give us hope of heading in the right direction, then all hints of markings were again gone.
Dusk was setting in, and hope that we would find the hut before nightfall was grim. This was starting to border on unpleasant: If we couldn't find our destination in daylight, our chances were slim by moonlight.
A shout from the leaders, the hut was in sight! Those of us in the front of the pack moved in. Mike, Tim and Brett (again fresh from Hawai'i to 11,000'!) dropped their packs and went into the darkness to help those in the back who had been putting in a steady cadence. The rest of the fore-runners set to making the hut habitable. Soon a fire roared away, melting snow for water, the propane lamps providing a steady glow to the folks cooking up an incredible meal of chicken, beans, and rice. The last of our group came in, and we stuffed ourselves, toasted our arrival to the hut with a variety of spirits, and passed out.