TR: Ridgway Hut, San Juans March 19-21, 2008

**squirrelmurphy** · 04-11-2008, 06:57 PM

For wandering, not lost's birthday, I booked two nights in the Ridgway hut from the San Juan Hut System. We'd never done a hut trip, and figured it'd be pretty cool. After a bit of trouble finding the trailhead + parking (map directions =! paper directions

), we were off. Booted ~1 mile up a muddy road until we could finally skin. At this point we weren't exactly on the trail, but figured we were pretty close.

WNL skinning

Welcome to your national forest
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2210/...a45a6a.jpg?v=0

The trail (once we found it) was easy to follow, but had some funky design flaws that got annoying. At one point, when the trail is ~200' below the hut, it abruptly drops 300' into a deep gully, effectively adding .5 to 1 miles and 300' to the skin. Seems they could have just as easily contoured the trail around the gully, but what can you do

6.5 miles and 2000' in, we got to the hut just as the sun was setting. Ridgway hut just got an extreme home makeover - they added solar panels and a bunch of car batteries to power electric lights. Sweet!

Friday Morning
Friday we skinned up to the ridge to take a look at the snowpack and terrain. The ridgeline was easily accessible, and afforded awesome views of Mt. Sneffels (14,150'):

Wind was kicking over the ridge back toward our aspect, and was transporting a bunch of snow up high, so we opted out of skiing the obvious couloir coming off the shoulder of Mt. Ridgway. Our pit in the woods showed about as bomber a snowpack as you can get:

(thats a shear test. i had to brace myself against the back wall of the pit to pull the 130 cm column out)

WNL ready to drop into the trees:

... and ripping the creamy pow:

Smile says it all!

The trees skied well, so we lapped the ~1200' shot a few times before calling it a day. Back to the hut to chop some wood and get a fire going to melt water for dinner. One other group showed up to share the hut, then another group of hardcoremofos w/ winter camping gear to set up in the clearing next to the hut. Full moon made for a beautiful night.

Saturday
Packed up and ready to go, we made another attempt at the couloir (why don't i have a picture?). Less wind, warm temps, it was looking good.

WNL with the point at Sneffels

Lots of options off that ridge to the east (Whitehouse Mtn)...

Mt Ridgway and the top of the couloir. We decided not to ski the gut. Snowpack was decent, but a 1" windcrust on top made it much less fun than the trees.

(wheeeeeeee!)

Came out into the low-angle runout of the slide path, it skied a bit better...

After that run, we stopped by the hut to grab our packs and started making our way down (and up) the trail back to the car. Turns out the drop into the gully is the steepest part of the trail

.

Nice view of Whitehouse, Ridgway, Sneffels from the field on the way out. We missed this view on the way in because I can't read a map, apparently.

A learning experience for sure, but overall a really fun intro to hut skiing