Backcountry Skiing Hut Trip to Uncle Bud’s Hut, Leadville, Colorado
Since Mike and I aren’t working this winter, we took advantage of being able to do a midweek hut trip without having to take any days off work. We were heading to a hut I’ve been eager to check out, Uncle Bud’s Hut in Leadville. We parked at the trailhead around 11am and started skinning in shortly thereafter. The first half of the tour was along roads covered in snow that had been groomed for snowmobile tours. I was worried we would be dodging snowmobiles, but we only saw a handful on this Tuesday in January. The road skinning was quite flat with a very gradual incline. After several miles, we reached the intersection where we turned off the groomed road and found ourselves on a more traditional skin track. The tour still remained quite gradual from this point until the hut. Most of the hut approach felt like it was in the trees, which is pretty in its own way, but there weren’t many opportunities for mountain views. The approach to the hut was about 6 miles and just over 1600 ft of elevation gain. It took us about 3 hours without any significant stops along the way.
When we arrived at the hut around 2:30 pm, it was full of people who had made their way into the hut earlier that day (I was a little surprised by this as the 10th Mountain Division clearly says not to arrive at the hut before 2 pm on your day of arrival, but clearly most people had been there for several hours already). This meant the beds in the two bedrooms upstairs were already full which left Mike and I to pick beds in the main area on the second floor. I actually really ended up enjoying our “bedroom” as we had fantastic views of the mountains - better than the views in the bedrooms in my opinion. We decided to settle in for the rest of the day and relax and read.
The next morning, we decided to head out for a day of skiing. We had been hoping to ski some of the south/southeast facing trees above the hut, however the warm temperatures early that week made the snow on that aspect have a nasty sun crust that made it undesirable to ski. That was a bit of a bummer as I hadn’t been anticipating sun being an issue for a January hut trip. This, combined with a persistent slab avalanche problem left us with only a few choices for skiing, but we made the most of it! We found ourselves lapping the mellow east and northeast faces of one of the mountains by the hut. The snow quality was excellent on those aspects. After quite a few laps, we decided to call it a day and head back to the hut where some hot chocolate was calling our names.
With the limited ski choices, we decided to just head back to the car first thing the following morning. This exit felt like one of those “uphill both ways” exits. We were able to ski the first 3/4 of the exit, but found ourselves putting skins on for the last 1-2 miles on the road back to the car. After about an hour and 15 minutes, we found ourselves back at the trailhead ready to go find ourselves a warm meal!
Overall, I really enjoyed Uncle Bud’s Hut. I really liked the layout - with 16 people staying it in, it never felt crowded. There’s ample space for everyone to cook and sit to eat, with a big area for everyone to hang out. It’s nice the sleeping area is on a different floor with a door blocking out some of the noise from downstairs if you find yourself going to bed early like we typically do. It’s a hut I’d love to go back to in the spring when the snowpack is stable and some of the steeper lines in the area are safer to ski!
