Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Hut To Hut Skiing

This is an interesting article. In Europe the system is well-developed (I have it on good authority that beer is served in some!).

I've been to Ostrander & Pear Lake huts. Anybody know of others?

10th Mountain Trail in Colorado

Don't know anything about California, but the Whites of New Hampshire have a top notch hut system.

http://hikethewhites.com/huts.html

John

True, but only a few of the AMC huts (Lonesome Lake, Carter, Zealand) are open in winter, and then on self-serve basis. The Randolph Mountain Club (RMC) has a high mountain hut on Adams, also self-serve. By self-serve, I mean you provide your own stove, fuel and food, and they provide a marginally heated building.

Not to seem argumentative, but ... you'd have a truly difficult time trying to ski hut-to-hut in the East. Snowshoe, yes, but ski - no.

Kevin, you are correct. When I did a web search of White Mountains hut to hut, all the results centered around hiking and snowshoeing. I thought some folks might be interested in what we have here in the East. My only connection - when I thru hiked the AT in 79 I spent one night sleeping on the tables at Lakes of the Clouds hut.

John

John - not too much has changed in that regard at the huts. Thru hikers still sleep on tables. Lakes has changed a bit, though. The hut was modified about 8 years ago, but you'd still recognize it.

This just in from the Bee. Not "our" Bee, the Fresno Bee. By Marek Warszawski.

Yeah -- I always think for a second "What did I send and to whom??"

For the Sierra, Ostrander is probably the best hut destination. I was Howard's relief there for about 18 years and had a great time skiing the area. The original idea when the hut was built in 1941 was to have it be one of several going around the Clark Range. But WWII interrupted that plan and when that was over, everyone got into lift skiing.

The hut was built in about 2 1/2 months by CCC labor. Incredible job.

g.

To show you how crazy I am, I actually started a process to put together a hut system above Huntington Lake out of Fresno, maybe 10 years ago.

My idea was to use existing buildings, and convert them into appropriate winter shelters, somewhat like Ostrander. The local USFS guys were supportive of the idea, I don't remember why it finally fell apart. Inertia kills a lot of things.

I suspect that such a system would be very popular.

Nice idea Ken. But the area back of Huntington is heavily used by snowmobilers (myself included occasionally). I'd not want to be x-c skiing into an area and have the machines speeding by.

...unless the existing buildings you had in mind were off any jeep roads. But that is probably not the case.

The were not, but they were also connected by summer trails that would probably work for skiing, but not so well for snowmobiling.

I also think that the area back in Edison/Florence/Mono are a little too low in elevation, and the snow gets too thin.