The stars are brightly shining at the Betty Bear Hut.
Christmas time is here, and as the holiday crowds flood in for what is arguably the busiest week of the year in Colorado’s mountain towns, it’s always nice to escape it all for a couple days and head out on a holiday hut trip.
Four years in a row now Anna-Lisa and I have kept up the tradition of visiting a hut on or around Christmas. It’s a seemingly fitting thing to do given the quaint, festive nature of spending a night or two in a small log cabin deep in the Colorado backcountry. This year we decided to head to the Betty Bear Hut west of Hagerman Pass, best accessed via Ruedi Reservoir to the east of Basalt.
On the 6 mile, 2,100 ft skin in.
The Betty Bear Hut is tucked away on the north side of the Fryingpan River valley only about 5 miles west of Turquoise Lake, but the Continental Divide and Hagerman Pass separate the two preventing easy access to Betty Bear from Leadville. I had been in this area on the west side of the pass twice before, tagging 13ers in the Hunter-Fryingpan Wilderness including one day hiking “Wayah Peak” with Steve from the same road used to access the hut.
Wayah Peak’s craggy summit coming into view on the approach. Behind it is the Continental Divide. Follow that ridge south and eventually you’d wind up on the north ridge of Mt. Massive.
After 3 hours of skinning with heavy packs we made it to the hut, enjoyed the last hour of sunshine on the deck, chopped up some wood and got the fire going.
As soon as the sun dips out of view things chill down fast at 11,200 ft.
The construction of the Betty Bear Hut in 1991 was a bit of a milestone in the 10th Mountain Hut system’s history. It had always been a goal to create a route connecting Aspen to Vail via a hut traverse. This really only became realistic with the building of Betty Bear, as it provides a reasonable stopping point and link between Margy’s Hut and the Skinner Hut.
Aspen architect Harry Teague designed the two-story hut with the living and kitchen areas on the top floor in order to keep the bottom floor quarters cooler for sleeping. So naturally with Anna-Lisa always being cold, we slept upstairs by the fire where it stayed toasty all night long. Thanks Harry!
Betty Bear’s interior. The main sleeping quarters are downstairs and the top floor features a raised deck on the south side overlooking the peaks across the valley.
As it turned out, being a Sunday night just before Christmas, we had the entire place to ourselves. With the hut system recently reverting back to allowing individual bookings rather than requiring whole huts to be reserved by single parties, you can pay a lot less for your stay and if you’re lucky enough to have the hut empty otherwise, even better.
The lights and stockings are hung by the chimney with care, Christmas music is playing, fire is roaring and the sun is setting over “Wayah Peak” out the window. Pretty much no place on the planet I’d rather spend an evening with my wife than here.
Then it was time for some Christmas whiskey cocktails and getting down to the business of cooking dinner. We hauled in a 4 pound chicken, potatoes and brussel sprouts to combine into a roast. Having never cooked in a woodfire oven before we didn’t realize how long it would take to get the thing up to temperature, but after enough chopping and feeding wood into the firebox we were eventually good to go.
No Grinches around here to steal the roast beast. Dinner is served!
After a few games of Scrabble (as is also tradition) the night faded into a bright and starry one, and before long, we were in our beds (sleeping bags) with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.
One more of Wayah Peak under the stars.
Coffee on the deck the next morning.
And of course a solid breakfast before the ski out, which included more chicken we couldn’t finish from the night before.
After a relaxing morning buttoning up the hut, we said our goodbyes to Betty Bear and skied back down to civilization. Another successful holiday hut trip in the books. Now if we could just get some more snow in the forecast…
Merry Christmas!
Sweet little trip! Sounds amazing and also, I think with the skinning and chopping of wood, you could have actually ended up with a calorie deficit at the end of the whole thing!!
Tough to say. We usually eat like gluttons on these things 🙂