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The powder pirate drives west on Interstate 70. His large skull and cross-bones flag flies proudly off the back of his Jeep. I follow the pirate into Vail and up to the parking lot for the Eiseman Hut trailhead. I’m on the bi-annual CU Backcountry Club’s hut trip in search of sweet lines and deep powder.
“The CU Backcountry Club is comprised of 35 CU students who all want to get away from crowded resorts,” says Eric Stevens, the club’s co-president, a 21-year-old aerospace engineering major.
They search for something wilder and more personal than the ski resort experience. The club goes into the backcountry every weekend, always in search of that perfect line.
The trail leading to Eiseman Hut begins on an old logging road winding above multi-million dollar vacation homes slowly climbing Spraddle Creek drainage. The trail head lies directly across I-70 from Vail Resort. I can see Vail’s chairlifts carrying skiers up the mountain while I carry my 40 pound pack ever upwards towards the hut. I can still hear the morning skier traffic.
After two miles, the trail turns from the logging road and follows bright blue diamonds nailed to trees, leading us through aspen glades and alpine meadows. As we ascend, those million-dollar homes turn to glades of aspen and Colorado blue spruce, while Vail Police Department sirens fade into a snowy sublime silence.
The day wears on and the faster group members (the hero group) separate from the rest of us (the normal group). I am slow, probably the slowest in the group. The backcountry club is filled with incredible athletes undaunted by this seven mile, 2,900 foot elevation gain, schlep to the hut.
I stay toward the back of the pack for the duration of the ski in. My legs are sore, my feet hurt and I am starting to believe the Abominable Snowman is stuffing rocks into my pack. I stop and take a water break – one of many – and all the “normal” people pass me.
Anthony Orig, 20, an undecided CU sophomore and the self-described powder pirate, is the only person left in sight. I approach him and ask if he’s having an “arrrrgh” of a good time.
“Ask me when we get there,” Anthony says.
Anthony and I trudge on. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, hoping to see the hut around the next bend. The trail description said the hut hides amongst a stand of spruce trees and skiers will not see the hut until they are only a few feet away.
With this information in mind, I think the hut is around every tree. I see hut mirages. Tree stumps become porches, and branches become rooftops. For an hour I constantly see the hut, smell the fire or hear the rest of our group gaily singing whatever people sing when they reach a backcountry hut. All of these signs proved false.
After climbing steep terrain for an hour, I came around a bend to find Anthony kneeling below an incredibly steep face. I ski to him and look up, finding a blue diamond sitting a couple hundred feet above. The ski track goes straight for it.
“I guess this is the steep part,” Anthony says.
I look at the large track ahead.
“Looks like it,” I say confidently, when in reality I thought I had just finished the steep part.
Anthony and I start the climb. One step at a time we climb the slope. My legs are lead weights unwilling to move, my feet are painful stubs lamenting every step and that damn Abominable Snowman somehow put more rocks in my pack just as I began the final push.
I reach the top thinking the hut must be right there. I catch up to Anthony.
“Fifty-one steps man, I count 51 and take a break,” Anthony says.
I follow Anthony, resting when he does, which is apparently every 51 steps. I am unable to count to 51 at this point, but I am pretty sure the number dips to around six.
Thirty minutes after that brutal slope, Anthony stops and sniffs the air.
“You smell that, Jimy?”
I don’t smell anything. I want to smell something, so I try harder.
“I don’t smell anything,” I say.
“That’s the wood stove, we’re here,” Anthony says.
Not this again. I look at Anthony like he is hallucinating. He has an extra hop in his step and speeds off into the dense alpine forest. I try my best to keep up.
I turn a corner and there it is. I blink to make sure it’s real. Like the palace perched high above Mt. Olympus, atop a snowy ridge veiled in grayed clouds, stands the Eiseman Hut. Anthony skies onto the porch and gives the wall a huge kiss.
Located in the Gore Range seven miles north of Vail, Colo., atop a ridge at 11,180 feet, the Eiseman Hut offers arguably the best skiing and riding at any of the 29 10th Mountain Division huts – a system of backcountry cabins in Colorado’s mountain region providing a relaxing place to stay for backcountry enthusiasts.
Anthony and I arrive at the hut an hour and a half after the hero group and 30 minutes after the normal group. Many people take a few runs that afternoon. Not me. I just relax by the wood stove, pretending the hike in wasn’t so bad. While I sit around the wood stove, those who skied the terrain right off the front porch come back comparing the snow to one of two metaphors: orgasms or heaven.
“I’m quite sure heaven looks a lot like this,” Stevens says after his first run.
Other members agree.
“The snow is that good,” says Kevin Wieczorek, a 33-year-old junior mechanical engineering major at CU and backcountry club staff member. “If I could I would go out there and make love to it.”
After the best pasta and meat sauce I’ve ever had, I sleep with visions of powder dancing in my dreams. I wake the next morning at 6:30 a.m. and it is still dark outside. The hut is silent. I grab my headlamp and make my way to the outhouse.
The path shoveled clear yesterday is now a knee-high snow drift. Covered in snow, I sleepily wander back into the hut, expecting to relax for a few hours, eat breakfast and ski all day. I open the door and find complete pandemonium.
Everybody is awake. Like deranged firemen, the backcountry clubbers are jumping into their snow pants and flying into their ski boots. They are foaming at the mouth for the one thing everyone came here for: powder. I hear Kevin asking the other backcountry club co-president Jeff Moskowitz, a 21-year-old geography major, affectionately called Moski, what time it is.
“It snowed another foot,” Moski says.
Breakfast becomes an afterthought.
“Powder for breakfast!” echoes throughout the cozy confines of the hut. I, too, quickly descend into the madness and in no time I am out the door clicking into my skis. Everyone breaks off into small groups. I have never skied in snow this deep.
Before 7 a.m., I finish my first run and begin the ski up from the bottom. I decide to eat breakfast, a decision made by only half the group. We have M&M pancakes and begin to get ready to hit the powder again. Moski, covered in white with a lascivious grin plastered to his face, comes into the hut for some water while I’m on my way out.
“It’s so good. It’s sooo good,” is all he can say.
The hero group finishes off three laps before breakfast and all of us climb the ridge north of the hut just before lunch. The climb takes a mere 20 minutes and people drop in one-by-one. Wild whoops, yee-haws and jubilant screams echo out over the mountain. I drop in last, because I like to ski without anyone close by. I straight-shoot the hill to gain speed and a curtain of white explodes from the tip of my skis up and over my face. It feels as though I’m hurtling down one of those dauntingly steep water slides.
I make a few turns getting only glances of where the trees are, enveloped in what many of the backcountry clubbers call the white room. Floating through snow this deep is quite relaxing. The powder holds you back just enough so the subtlest of movements gracefully rocks you to and fro. All is perfect.
My legs aren’t tired and my back doesn’t hurt. I’m just floating through white puffy goodness. I imagine playing in the clouds would be quite similar. I do seven laps of essentially the same run, occasionally starting higher on the ridge or floating through different trees or meadows. Every run is as good as the last. The snow is so deep that a snorkel may be a valuable tool.
Julie Wallace, 23, is a senior psychology and integrative physiology major at CU. She convinces me to climb the ridge north of the hut one last time. Battling fatigue and an angry blister, I ski up the ridge for 20 minutes before descending. The group of 13 club members on this year’s trip left their mark across the entire hill side, but face shots of Champaign powder can still be found despite the plethora of ski tracks.
I reach the bottom, despite a fiery pain in my thighs. For the first time in days, a sliver of light penetrates the cloudy gray veil surrounding us, igniting the Holy Cross Wilderness in a heavenly alpenglow. Julie and I stand transfixed on the only view we’ve had this trip.
“You make the last run worth it?” asks Julie.
“I think so,” I reply.
Tired and hungry, the group returns to Eiseman hut that night recounting some of the best turns anyone had ever had over what was most likely the best burritos anyone had ever had.
“It’s like trying to describe love,” Stevens says when attempting to describe the day’s snowpack. “You can’t describe that kind of thing.”
Stevens, a snowboarder, eventually told me that riding in deep powder is like surfing.
“The face shots come over you and it’s like a wave crashing around you,” Stevens says. “It’s surfing through feathers.”
The night ends with a raucous game of modified Uno, where shots of Mrs. Buttersworth syrup seem all too common, cementing the bonds made on the trip forever. Smiles and laughter fill the high alpine hut.
I wake the next morning to a classic Colorado blue-bird-day. Not a cloud in the sky. From the hut’s large south facing windows I can see Vail and Beaver Creek’s sunny slopes, the Holy Cross Wilderness and the Flat Top Wilderness to the west.
I realize, with the view, that yes we are still on Earth and not in some strange snow globe. The previous two overcast days combined with the excessive powder and great turns was an uncanny experience for all.
The hike out is bittersweet. The sun sparks millions of snow crystals to dance while I ski down to the parking lot. It is less like skiing and more like a six mile cat track with an occasional climb. Now the sublime snowy silence fades into I-70’s dull roar and spruce meld to aspens and later into those million dollar mansions.
Surprisingly, I don’t reach the parking lot last, finding the group basking under an unusually warm January sun. Eric eats chocolate and stares up Spraddle Creek drainage with a look of complete serenity.
“Wow,” Stevens says. “We skied the shit out of that hut.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Jimy Valenti at James.Valenti@Colorado.edu
