Monday, December 12, 2005

Peter Rabbit's Hut


My adventure last weekend started after work Friday evening. JP and I were all geared up and excited to camp in the “Peter Rabbit” hut on the Berthoud Pass. This hut is an old forest service hut that had been boarded up for the last couple of decades. This year the powers that be (I have no idea who) open the hut for backcountry visitation on the backcountry honor system. Which is basically stated;
Respect the wilderness, wildlife and clean up after yourself.
With fully loaded overnighter packs we headed out to find the hut just pass dusk. We had a GPS waypoint of the hut’s location and JP had a pretty good idea of its whereabouts after riding by it the weekend before. But after bushwhacking through waist deep powder in single digit temperatures for about two hours and getting as close as 300 feet away from the hut (according to the GPS) we had no luck actually finding the hut that night! So we reverted to plan “B” (always have a plan B in the BC) which was camping in the nearby Mary-Jane parking lot. We had a very comfortable evening with a small fire, a few beers and lots of laughs.
The next day we woke up bright and early, had a small breakfast (breakfast burritos), drove to the trailhead parking lot and started tromping up the now obvious snow packed trail toward the hut. The hut was a short snowshoe (3/4 mile) and was in great shape as backcountry huts go. It was clean and well kept with all kinds of great keepsakes people had left through out the years. It had a wood burning stove and was stalked with extra sleeping bags, kitchen pot and pans, a lantern, a first aid kit, a dream catcher, a hippy drum, a wood ax and saw, some candles, an extra pair of snowshoes, books, and a hut journal. We didn’t stay long that morning because we were excited to get up to the summit and look for safe powder lines down the peaks….so we continued to shoed up the mountain…

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:15 PM

    sweet write up. that was another rad trip. can't wait for the weekend.

    ps. my friend from frisco and a few others are planning a jackson trip for mid-late jan if your interested. lots of backcountry on teton pass and shred dawgin at jacksonhole resort. i'm headin up with the crew.

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  2. Anonymous8:14 PM

    Sick as always Alex. Makes me want to shake off my destroyed body and hit the hill again tomorrow!

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  3. Anonymous8:46 PM

    hi,
    we had a similar experiance yesterday and today except even when we went back we could'nt find it. Were we in the right pull off/drainage? Any type of direction might help.

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  4. Anonymous8:46 PM

    my e-mail is Pleuney@yahoo.

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  5. show dont tell use to be the word. sharing the wealth is grand until you look for the solitude that no longer exists.

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  6. show but dont tell, at least that is how it use to be. we all enjoy the great outdoors. Like to get away from the tourist... until the tourist come to you.

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  7. thc,
    Couldn't agree more. I usually leave out location details (GPS coords) to protect my favorite spots.
    Thanks for reading.
    A

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