Hut, Two, Three, Four

By John Skow

Skiing at even the most glorious of resorts can pall after a few days, for reasons of tameness and sameness. Up the lift, down the beautifully groomed trail, half an hour in the lift line with several hundred nice people, then up and down again: the alpine skier turns himself into a yo-yo. And after the fifth or tenth chug around the splendidly scenic cross-country circuit, the Nordic skier can feel like a toy train.

Jaded skiers, take heart. A civilized but still adventurous alternative, long pursued in the Alps and in Scandinavia, is catching on in the U.S. Skiers trek across the snow for several days, covering a few miles a day and sleeping overnight in huts and tents high in the mountains. Accommodations range from the rustic to the comfortable, complete with cocktails and elaborate meals. Though hut-to-hut skiing can be found throughout the northern U.S., it is most popular in the West. "The huts are really in vogue," says Dick Jackson, head of a ski-tour company in Aspen, Colo. "You get the tough uphill climb and then the downhill reward, plus a comfortable place to stay."

Jackson should know, since he leads trips along one of the busiest routes in the country. Named after a U.S. Army ski troop that trained in Colorado during World War II, the Tenth Mountain Division Trail stretches 40 miles from Aspen toward Vail. Begun in 1982, the path winds past three high-altitude huts (the largest sleeps 20), with another six on the way if the U.S. Forest Service approves extending the course the full 79 miles to Vail. Stoves, cooking gear and mattresses are provided in the huts, but skiers must lug their own food and sleeping bags. The price: $12 a person each night. Despite the rigors of the high-country jaunt, 3,500 skiers are expected to use the huts this season, up from 1,700 three years ago.

Skiers who insist on posher treatment could look up Leonard-Ayer Expeditions, which is based in an old mining town in Idaho called Stanley (pop. 99). Joe Leonard, 46, a bearded, Idaho-born mountain man, expects to guide about 150 people this season into the Sawtooth Mountains, twice as many as three years ago. Camps for the tours are a couple of huts and a yurt, a large, round, tentlike structure, set a day's journey apart at the edge of the Sawtooth wilderness.

Leonard's wife Sheila, 34, a cook of high local renown, prepares all the trekkers' food in Stanley, then has it delivered to the huts by toboggan. Their partners are David Ayer, 37, a financial planner from Massachusetts, and his wife Lexa, 36, who split their time between Boston and Stanley. Ayer proposed to Lexa outside one of the Sawtooth yurts four years ago, after the third day of a five-day tour. It was -48 degrees F, and he wanted to see whether she had the right attitude toward touring.

"I said yes. Now let's get back inside," she recalls.

The Sawtooths are magnificent, jagged mountains, precisely described by their name, but their high valleys and lightly forested benchlands are gentle enough so that the five-mile march to the first hut at 6,900 ft. is no hardship, even for inexperienced skiers. Leonard has taken clients as young as six and as old as 70 over the route, he says, and only rarely has anyone had difficulty.

One cloudy, warmish day (28 degrees F) last month, a party of eleven skiers, including two guides, left Stanley for a five-day tour. As the group slogged in a single file through snow that was waist-deep off the trail, gobs of snow fell from the lodgepole pines and down the necks of the marchers. No one had any real trouble keeping up, but after five hours the sight of the small, snug hut, built of plywood and two-by-fours and insulated with Styrofoam, was welcome.

So was a pool in a nearby creek, fed by a hot sulfur spring. Skiers lolled in the steamy water till supper, then sat down to cocktails, breast of chicken in a delicate wine-and-mushroom sauce, boiled potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, homemade bread and lemon pastry. The $625 cost of the trip seemed a bargain. On the next day's schedule, everyone knew, was a climb of something called Cardiac Ridge. So better get some sleep.

In the morning a few found time for another curative soak in the hot spring, bathing suits optional and opted against. Then, after an insulating breakfast, came the serious business of Cardiac Ridge. The first stage of the route up this steep 1,200-ft. snow face crossed the rubble pile, or deposition zone, of the avalanches that frequently rumble down the ridge. Outfitted with tiny radio transceivers that beep the location of skiers trapped under snow, the adventurers light-footed one by one across the dangerous stretch.

Then came the long climb up among the scattered trees of the ridge. Kirk Bachman, 31, the lead guide, broke a zig-zag trail and at the end of each zig and zag did a kick turn to change direction. Kick turns are done while the skier is standing still, and they do not require much muscle. But it is necessary to balance confidently on one ski while swinging the other one up in a kind of goose step and then flopping it down in the opposite direction.

Confidence sometimes disappears in steep places just when it is needed, and everyone except the guides fell at least once. Some of the climbers were fit enough so that their huffing and puffing were minimal. Hiram McComish, 48, and Wellington Henderson, 54, two businessmen from San Francisco, are health foodists and ultramarathoners. On the other hand, Jack Werner, 59, a professor of aeronautical engineering from Long Island, and his wife Caryl, 56, who runs an importing business, found themselves just barely up to the demands of this sharply angled pitch. Caryl, who smokes and always brought up the rear, fell 14 times and then stopped counting. But for both of the Werners, the beauty of the mountains and high, untracked fields made up for the snow in their ears. "I don't like the physical strain," admitted Jack. "I'd rather sleep in a bed, and I'd rather have plumbing. But what you get is the feeling of being here, and you can remember that and keep it always."

Camp that night was in a high, alpine meadow at the base of 10,035-ft. Goat Peak. Alas, the hot tub at the hut there was broken. But dinner was an elegant beef bourguignon. Caryl showed the foresight of a veteran trekker, never mind kick turns, by pulling a bottle of Jack Daniel's out of her pack. Simmie Salembier, 42, a caterer from Los Angeles, turned out to have a canteen full of rum. Aching muscles told the day's history, and would retell it more insistently the next morning. Outside, stars snapped in the clear sky, just as they are supposed to do on mountain trips, and inside, feet wiggled in sleeping bags. For the Sawtooth voyagers, this day's chapter ended early.

With reporting by Robert C. Wurmstedt/Stanley