My First Hut Trip... with the skis :)

I'm gonna tell you just what Chris said once we were back home: "We should quit killing ourselves on our days off!"
Now. If you think of Chris as smby who usually doesn't complain about a good work-out, actually is always LOOKING FOR A BUTT KICKING WORK-OUT... to my (un)happiness... sometimes. Now you really have a good idea of the exercise we got within these two days.

We started on Tuesday morning with... Chris getting up super-duper early in the morning from excitement and... starting cooking breakfast. YESSS! I love when he does it!!! :)
And me? I was still sleeping. Too tired to get up after working out with my friend Iva the day before. Auch! Not a good start. :(
But Chris was patient. Yes. This time he was and I really appreciated it. :) Well. We didn't have our Sled-neck Troupe waiting for us, so he allowed me to have a good rest. Thank you!

By 9.30 am we started our drive up towards Leadville and parked by the Crane Park Trail Head parking lot to get ready for our "easy" skin up to the 10th Mountain Division Hut. Yes. Easy. That's what we thought...

To make a long hike short:

• Chris was running up the mountain waiting for the hut to show up sooner then soon... without luck.
• Sarah bonked on the hike up while trying to catch up with him, since he had most of the food and drinks(!)

But we had a very good time and reached the hut in perfect sunny weather. The views during the hike and from the top were really astonishing and worthwhile of our sweating.

I'm feeling rather akward... you can tell!

Happy hiker listening to her country tunes :o)

Still smiling...
because not yet knowing how much longer is the trail(!)

Bonking and getting unhappy...
where's the food?!?!?!?

Yes! Our Final Destination:
10th Mountain Division Hut, yuhuuu!!!

Finally... made it!

On the way up we also got some excitement by seeing two sheriffs on their sleds, getting up to the hut to help somebody in need.

After an hour or so, four other rescuers passed us on two sleds (one of them with a trailer) and almost got stuck.

When we finally got to the hut, we met all of them and an unhappy hiker with an I.V. in his arm. They were talking about food poisoning. Bad place to get sick in a beautiful hut 11,300+ feet up in the middle of nowhere.
They got him on one of the sleds... after some other rescuer has been rescued himself by getting his sled stuck in a tree well... and drove him to the Leadville hospital. "Best Wishes!" - we thought, for the trip down and for a prompt recovery!

We were finally going to spend the night by ourselves... that's what we thought... until the rest of the rescued hiker's party came back and slept one more night in our same hut. They were going to skin to another hut, but it was getting to late to do so. So they prefer to come back. Well. At least I had some good time with this "Rainbow Sticker Group of Only Guys Team". He-he!
And I'm sure Chris had good time too. At least he wasn't the only one supposed to entertain me during the whole evening(!). It was especially funny seeing 5 of them getting hungrier and hungrier, while the 6th has been cooking for the last 2 hrs and... me and Chris were already eating after just 1/2 hr of preparing our pasta. Ok-ok. We didn't have some fancy-shmancy beef strogonoff pasta, or pasta with parmesan chicken... but we didn't really get sick either. He-he! ;o)

The next day, after they left... we finally had the whole hut to ourselves! Could go skinnydipping in the lake and run free in the snow (yeah! sure! with a super-duper thick dry suit on!!!).

Bird-watching in the morning, while having breakfast

Views from our morning hike

Chris lost in the woods...
with the green jacket, you can't really tell is he a tree or a person

Getting the skins on

Well. We did go skinning up a little hill, where I found out that my telly-skiing abilities aren't yet too good to ski in the tight trees with heavy snow (ops! I thought I was already a pro! not really!). So I left Chris having fun going up and skiing down, while jumping on a little jump.

Smiling for the camera after the hike

Afterwords we played a bit with our beacons. Chris (and I!) wanted to make sure I know how to use this tool in case of an avalanche. I got to admit I was able to find his pretty quickly. I'm a little concern though of his ability to find my own beacon. Oh-oh! Just kidding...

When we finally stopped playing, we got back in the hut to... play with the dogs of one of the 10 Mtn Division Huts Volunteers, who was taking care of the hut. Only a good drinker could guess his search & rescue dogs' names! Kahlua was the older darker lab and Margarita the nutty honey colored one.

Views from the hut before our return to the civilization

Also while skiing down, she kept chasing us whenever she heard us talking in the woods. I think her owner was happy she was able to find us (she's a search & rescue dog!), but also annoyed she wasn't really obeying him. [Oh-oh!]

Chris breaking the pow-pow

Time wise. It took us about 3.30 hrs of skinning up and... 1 hr and 10 mins (with stops!) to get back to the car.

Back at the truck

Beautiful experience and we'll repeat it for sure. Just not next week. You know. We've already planned another hut trip with... the snow-mobiles! And our Sled-neck Friends!!! :o)

Oh! After this work-out we went to Mango's and got a super yummy tasty grilled chicken sandwich for me and hamburger sandwich for Chris. We were SO HUNGRY!