Betty Bear Hut

Betty Bear Hut is part of the 10th Mountain Divison Huts lying outside of Aspen, CO. A few weeks ago I got a call from Dan to join a group that had planned on skinning and snowshoeing up to the hut for a few nights over the weekend.

While I initially excitedly accepted, a rough bout with Covid had me second-guessing myself a few days before the trip. Although I was no longer contagious, my energy and fitness levels had taken a huge hit. The prospect of a 6 mile trek in with 2,800ft of vert and a 45lb pack on sounded...well, terrible.

So with only 48 hours to go until the trip, I was wavering on whether I would actually join. Would it be worth slogging uphill in freezing temps only a few days free of Covid?

Spoiler: Yes, it would. I went, and it was! I woke up Friday morning with a spring in my step, hastily threw together a pack, pre-cooked all the bacon (I was on breakfast duty Sunday morning...also set my fire alarms off multiple times), loaded up my car and jumped on i70 to sit in traffic for four hours.

We spent Friday night at the Silver Spruce Inn. Since we needed to be on the trailhead early Saturday morning, we decided the best course of action would be to break up the drive, and only have to be on the road for ~90 minutes Saturday morning before hitting the trail.

As far as the trailhead goes, it is a straight shot after you turn off in Basalt right before Carbondale. A fair word of warning: the road, while well-maintained, could easily become impassable. You're going to want to make sure whoever driving has 4-wheel drive and some snow tires.

I drove in with Hailey, and as we were driving in I couldn't help but continue to peek at my dashboard thermometer. The temps kept dropping. From a 15 degree morning in Glenwood Springs to 10 degrees in Basalt...to 3 degrees as we drove through the pass, and then a jump to -8. Yikes. While I wasn't worried for myself, I knew that most of the folks on this trip had never done a hut trip before. Even more so, many had never toured or been in the backcountry in the winter before. Would they have the proper gear and knowledge to stay warm? All those thoughts were nervously swirling in my mind as we finally got to the trailhead.

Amazingly - and as the morning grew later and sun came out - temps increased significantly. I was shocked to find that within 15 minutes I was drenched in sweat and down to a t-shirt! It's truly incredible how prime touring temps are less than 20 degrees, and that we can comfortably navigate in the mountains in just a single layer.

Below, a picture that demonstrates the rookie nature of our group (note the sticker!)

Once we got going, I was really pleasantly surprised how well the group did on the flats. Josh was flying, and Ty settled in at a cruiser pace as well. This shouldn't really have surprised me, though, as they're both great atheletes (even if Josh was just going for his first tour!).

Along the way up we bumped into the group that occupied the hut the night before skiing down. They let us know that the propane was out, which was a bit of a bummer. It's always nice on hut trips to throw the coffee on first thing to pick the spirits up in the morning. This meant we would just have to wake up a bit earlier to get the stove cranking.

The route itself to Betty Bear is really straightforward. Follow the trail for the first ~5 miles (and more than likely you'll have a skin track to follow unless it just snowed), and then take a hard turn north up into the steeps.

And the steeps section is steep. This is where some of the group really started to struggle. Josh at one point took off his skis and started bootpacking, thinking it was impossible to get up the icy switchbacks on skis. He was flabbergasted as I zipped by him, and I couldn't help but laugh. I remember being in the same situation as him years ago, watching my sisters cleanly kick-turn and skin up seemingly impossible slopes as I flailed around and kicked like a madman.

We finally made it to the hut after a mere 3 hours of touring. Significantly faster than I had anticipated. I joyfully kicked off my skis, unbuckled my boots, threw them into walk-mode, and approached the hut.

"Oh shit! I totally forgot to ask Hailey for the code!"

Somehow, the first four people to get to the hut had no idea what the code on the lock was to get in. Luckily for us, it was an incredible bluebird day, the sun was shining, and we ceremoniously cracked the few beers we had stowed away in our packs, blissfully sipping on them and basking in the Aspen sun.

Friends hanging on the porch:

Finally, Hailey got up and let us all into the cabin. We were greeted with a lovely little surprise from the previous nights inhabitants!

After unpacking, I recruited Ty to come help me build a jump. At this point, the blister situation was pretty bad across the board. I had brought a med kit and helped bandage up some folks who were suffering. Erin was one of the worst. Her foot had a massive flapper. It was as if she was recovering from trench foot after spending 6 months on the frontlines in WWI.

Okay, that was an exaggeration. But it was still pretty gnarly. We chopped the flap, disinfected, gauzed and bandaged. Boom, good to go.

As Ty took off his slippers to put his boot back on, he realized he had a nasty blister as well!

Ouch. This immediately reminded me of Curt Schilling's infamous bloody sock in the 2004 ALCS.

After Ty cleaned himself up, we built a nice jump and took a few hits each. The bigger goal was to get it set up so that she could get a nice clean freeze overnight and hit fast the next day.

After our jump building we had a great pasta and salad dinner prepared by a few of the guys. Bagged wine, ukelele, and card games followed.

Naturally, I was the first in bed at around 9? 9:30? I took a quick pit stop at the latrine (massive....why was it so massive??) crawled into my bag right next to the wood-burning stove we would keep going all night and drifted off to a deep sleep.

View from the side of the hut:

Hailey doing a little wine tasting:

The next morning I cooked breakfast with Shelby. Bacon breakfast burritos. It took us quite some time to get the stove hot enough to heat the frying pan, but the wait was certainly worth it. Properly fueled, I packed up my things to head out. The rest of the group was staying through Monday, but I had some meetings I had to get back for and would be dipping out early.

I was stoked for the initial descent back down since I didn't do any real skiing. Once I started heading down though, I quickly realized this wouldn't be fun turns in powder, but survival skiing. The skin track had frozen over in the night and was a sheet of ice. Similarly, if I went off-route and picked my way through the trees I was met with a heinous crust that almost took me out my first two turns. That, combined with a ~40lb pack make things particularly challenging.

I stuck to the skin track and before I knew it popped out back onto the main road to begin my ski back to the car. I arrived at my car exactly one hour later, stripped off my boots, sipped a nuun, ate a bagel, and mentally prepared myself for the inevitable i70 traffic that awaited me.

Overall, the vert was significantly less than I saw in a number of blogs about the BB Hut approach. My approach stats:

Vert: 2,378ft.

Distance: 6.2miles

Moving time: 2:37

Elapsed time: 3:05

Until next time.