Tenth Mountain Division soldiers, their white uniforms perfect camouflauge in snow,
set up a Browning M1917 machine gun for target practice at Camp Hale near Leadville.
The view today (right) from Camp Hale includes the Sawatch Mountain Range.
Department of Defense (left); craig hoffman (right)


It was early in March 2020. Uh oh. Ignoring the viral news, my hiking buddies and I launched a winter trek to Uncle Bud’s Hut, a hiker’s hostel high above Leadville. We were planning to spend two nights at 11,000 feet, with six possibly infectious strangers, snoring in communal bunk rooms and sharing a snug living room and kitchen facilities. Bad idea, right?

Thank goodness we went anyway. I made those hut memories last for two years, as I waited to breathe safely again.

I had reason to believe that it would all work out, despite everything. I have hiked, skied, and snowshoed to a couple dozen 10th Mountain Division huts in Colorado over the last 20 years. I did so happily – OK, obsessively – even back when I had to fly in from Pennsylvania for the privilege.

Scattered in a rough oval that extends south from Vail to Aspen, these rustic huts were built by World War II veterans upon their return from Europe. In the early 1940s, the U.S. military recruited skiers who could be trained as soldiers, to battle Germany in the Italian Alps. Camp Hale was base for 14,000 men who volunteered and mustered in for training. That’s the lovely high mountain valley on Route 24 between Leadville and Vail that President Biden designated a national monument in 2022.

During WW II, 5,000 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division were either killed or wounded. Many of the survivors returned to Colorado, where they developed Vail and Aspen resorts, among others, and invented the modern ski industry in the United States.

They also memorialized their fallen comrades by building and naming huts in their honor. Uncle Bud’s Hut, our destination “The Weekend Before the World Changed,” was named for Burdell S. Winter, a 10th Mountain Division soldier who was killed in action in Italy in 1944. His family built the hut as a monument to their lost son and brother. Its walls carry a poignant verse his father wrote in his honor, and there are archives that document 10th Mountain training and battles.

That’s the way it is when you spend nights at these huts: You go for views and the high-mountain hospitality, but along the way you receive lessons from the sacrifices earlier generations made to protect purple mountains’ majesty, fruited plains and the American way.

It’s a beautiful combination of history and exhilaration.



Among the highest cabins is Skinner Hut at 11,620 feet near the Continental Divide.
Craig Hoffman


I made my first Colorado hut trip in February 1997, a few months after my father died. He was a World War II vet and my original trail guide, piloting my three brothers and me on trails all over New England. That’s where I learned the joys of grunting uphill toward sweeping views and experiences. It was suffering with a purpose, and I gained valuable life lessons about perseverance, delayed gratification and the motivating properties of Hershey bars, as we made our way along mountain pathways.

A few decades later, those experiences would inspire me to fly west for the privilege of skiing to Jackal Hut, built by 10th-Mountain enthusiasts Jack Schuss and Al Zesiger. (Jack + Al … get it?)

My friends and I weren’t military material. We were out for a lark in the snow, and we found it. Our ski trail took us along the bottom of the Camp Hale valley, then cut sharply uphill onto the ridge where the hut looks out over a sublime landscape. We applied climbing skins onto our backcountry skis and humped 40-pound backpacks up toward the clouds.

The cabins are supplied with endless firewood to feed into raging-hot wood stoves, and the kitchens contain all the pots, pans, and dishes you need to serve up high-calorie comfort meals. Accordingly, we packed in marinating steaks and oceans of red wine, many packets of cocoa, plus other necessities (dry socks, half-and-half), to motivate each uphill slide of our skis. We had to conquer 2,500 feet of elevation in three miles, with nothing but our legs and our bellies to propel us.

So, I felt a huge thrill, and relief, when I spotted the chimney of Jackal Hut, sending a welcoming wreath of smoke up into the bluebird sky. The two-mile high panorama of the Sawatch Range made me gasp in all kinds of ways.

When we burst through the door of the hut, clomping in with our AT ski boots, we were immediately welcomed by friendly adventurers. We found bunks upstairs in a communal sleeping room with 180-degree views of high-altitude heaven and threw down our sleeping bags. I took a much-deserved nap.

That night, after our steak dinner, my friends and I pulled on our jackets and headlamps and tromped through the snow up the hillock behind the hut. The sky was resplendent with stars, with the mad tail of the Comet Hale-Bopp streaking across the sky. I shed a frozen tear, thinking of my dad, who had made me into a lover of the mountains and an appreciator of starry nights.

Thanks for all that, Dad.

Those two frigid, friendly nights at Jackal Hut would settle my travel destiny for the next two decades. Despite my busy life as father to two kids, husband to one understanding wife, and my relentless responsibilities as a magazine editor, I made time every fall and winter to fly to Colorado to take another hut trip. Yes, these high-mountain treks are habit-forming.

The highlights were truly high, and even the lowlights contained life lessons.

Hut Lesson #1: Be careful who you follow. One of the hazards of skiing or snow-shoeing into a hut is: Tracks in the snow. Every idiot leaves them, whether he knows where he’s going or not. And yet, I have often followed those wandering tracks, because they imply a route that might not be obvious in five feet of snow.

One winter a friend and I were skiing into Sangree Froehlicher Hut, just north of Leadville, in a freshening snowstorm. We were so desperate for hot chocolate that our brains were not functioning properly. That’s the only way to explain how we followed a pair of ski tracks around a cirque at the base of Mount Zion, until they finally, alarmingly, mysteriously stopped. It was as if the skier had been beamed up by aliens.

We turned back, skied another mile, and found the juncture where the trail actually turned off, toward the hut. The life-lesson here couldn’t have been more obvious: Be careful who you follow,
because they may have no better clue than you do, and quite possibly it will be worse.

 

Hut Lesson #2: Trails lead in two directions, and only one of them is right.

I’ve visited Uncle Bud’s Hut three times in my life, so you’d think I’d get the hang of where it is, exactly.

Not so much.

On one of my family trips to Colorado, to show our7- and 9-year-old sons the big landscapes the way my dad had shown them to me, I booked a couple of nights at Uncle Bud’s Hut.

It was a reasonable six-mile hike from the trailhead at the end of Turquoise Lake along the Continental Divide trail. But that mileage depends on leaving the parking lot heading north. After too little map consulting, I led us south, and were a full mile into it when I realized we were heading for Durango, not Uncle Bud. So, our hike turned into eight miles, rather than six, and probably didn’t boost my family’s faith in me as a route-finder. But if you’re a kid, it’s important to realize that Dad doesn’t know everything.

 

Hut Lesson #3: Breakfast is a trap!

When you’re heading into the mountains in February, there’s a lot to think about: Do we have enough warm clothes, enough gear to see us through an emergency night out in the snow, and is merlot the right choice to accompany a marinated skirt steak? Answering questions like that takes time in the morning – time when you really should be on the trail, not eating a giant burrito.

But breakfast was our priority before a winter trip to Ben Eiseman Hut, on the ridge looking down Vail valley. Over our third cup of coffee, we debated our dinner plans and which gear to take or leave out, and hence arrived at the trailhead three hours late. Off we skied, full of optimism, but without proper knowledge of the route up to the hut.

At a critical trail juncture, we followed random tracks, instead of the actual trail, so we ended up on top of a little hill, where we ate lunch and contemplated our stupidity. (Are you sensing a theme, here?) We’d left the hut route an hour earlier. Then we compounded the error by choosing to follow a contour line on the map, rather than return to the point of our wrong turn. Our reward for these miscalculations was a four-hour slog through deep snow. We finally rejoined the trail at dusk – it comes early, in winter! – and continued our uphill struggle well into the night. Around 10 p.m., I caught a whiff of woodsmoke and knew our ordeal was nearly over.

When we shed our skis and stumbled through the front door, our hut mates – all of whom had arrived, sensibly, that afternoon – looked up in alarm. I collapsed onto a couch and was administered hot beverages by kind strangers.

Sometimes suffering is worth the sympathy it engenders.

 

Hut Lesson #4: Huts are almost heaven. There are plenty of reasons I feel that way. For one thing, they are about as high as heaven; it’s a challenge to hike, breathe and sleep at 10,000 feet.

But aside from those minuses, consider these countervailing pluses:

  1. Huts have roofs and thick walls. Once you’re in, you’re safe and warm, so you can recover from whatever it took to get you there.
  2. Huts are stocked with plenty of split wood, and stoves to burn it in. My friend Greg likes to pack bread-making ingredients, to bake in the cast-iron ovens that are standard hut equipment. Heat is happiness.
  3. Huts have propane burners to cook on, plus all the plates, silverware and cook pans you need to whip up culinary masterpieces. Or plain old mac n cheese. And because you’re not carrying a tent, you have more room to pack food and drink. Those equate to happiness, too.
  4. Location, location, location. 10th Mountain huts, situated at or above timberline in one of the most beautiful mountain landscapes in the world, have all three.
  5. They’re cheap. Less than $40 a night buys you a bunk, 12 new best friends and all-you-can-eat scenery. Try finding a bargain like that on Airbnb.
  6. You’ll meet exceptional people (living and dead) up there. There’s an aristocracy of altitude and attitude for people who will even consider walking uphill for six miles under a heavy burden to spend a night in the mountains. If you’re one of them, you’ll find like-minded nutcases once you enter any hut. And the people are as important to the joy of huts as any view. You’ll also be able to read about the efforts of the 10th Mountain soldiers, including the specific hero your hut is named for. I’ve made it my reverential duty to read up on, and thank, these soldiers with every visit.

 

Hut Lesson #5: When you’ve been skiing to the huts for two decades, flying in from out of state, you should consider relocating to Colorado.

That was a version of the argument I made to my wife when our kids had left our Pennsylvania home and it was clear they wouldn’t be returning. “We could save money on airfare if we moved to Fort Collins, hon!” I argued. We did, in 2017. As my favorite bumper sticker says: I wasn’t born in Colorado, but I got here as soon as I could.

And on some level, I had been laying down a geographical down payment on this special place, each time I walked or skied the spectacular Rocky Mountain ridgelines and stayed in iconic huts with views of everything worth seeing.

I belong here now because I’ve lived the landscape.

 

Hut Lesson #6: If the stock market collapses when you’re visiting Uncle Bud, you won’t even notice.

As noted above, I snowshoed into Uncle Bud’s Hut as the world was succumbing to a marauding virus. We were of course dimly aware of the threat. But once we left the trailhead, we were oblivious to the tick-tock of dire news. Happily, the huts have no Wi-Fi, and all the cell towers are pointed in other directions. Which brings to mind the zen koan: If the stock market crashes when you’re in the wilderness, does it make a sound?

I can confirm that it does not.

And besides, there are more important things to consider up there. The first-time nature called, when I was at Uncle Bud’s Hut, I found my way along a frozen path to the outhouse, thinking that the privy had an oddly prominent location. When I stepped inside, I realized why it had been placed there: The south-facing window of the toilet perfectly framed Mount Elbert, Colorado’s highest peak. That privy offers one of my favorite mountain views in Colorado.

That’s the hut effect in a nutshell: These gorgeously situated cabins take everyday life to new heights. So, hop on huts.org and make a reservation. There are probably spots open next fall, after the kids go back to school. And the aspens will be spectacular. There are hike-ins from one to 10 miles, and even a few where you can drive your four-wheel drive right up to the door. I like to snowshoe in because winter is spectacular up there.

Whatever the season, just go. When you reach your hut, tip your hat to the mountain soldiers who made our current lives possible, and invited us to enjoy this landscape by building high mountain refuges that help you see Colorado from an elevated angle.