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Homestake Peak @ 13,200 ft, blanketed with a foot of fresh snow. A good storm with 60-70 mph winds dropped a foot of snow overnight.
At the cabin, the cabin sits at 11,300ft.
The kitchen is well equipped with pots, pans and dinnerware. We have propane for cooking, water is the snow melted in the pot on the wood burning stove. That is an important task that everybody pitches in to keep filled. With the water we need to use it for drinking, cooking and washing dishes. The pot has a spigot so filling a water bottle is easy enough, at this altitude we are drinking water frequently.
Great views out the windows in the common room. The outhouse is a short stroll away. During the night of the storm it is a trip out with the shovel to keep the walkway open.
Blanket of powder made the mountains spectacular. It is a blast to break trail through the fresh snow.
Crossing some of the slopes requires just one at a time for safety.
The 3 guys preparing to drop down off the ridge line we were crossing.
A description of how this turned out from Weez..."Beautiful day today 12 inches new snow, ascended a 3 hour hike ridge
line, decided to descend. Well let just say ran into a 200 foot cliff
band very sketchy situation lots of inprov. Made it back safe ahh..."
The guys ended the desent with a slide down a 30 fott rock face. We tried a route to the north, with some sketchy snowboarding along the top of the cliff band. there was no room for error. We came to a dead-end. So our decision was to backtrack out. It required snowshoing back up some of the rock faces. The snow was sketchy and it took about 45 minutes to cover 20 yards. We were able to gain the top of the ridge and then it was a matter of backtracking our trail from earlier.
This was a good experience of keeping together in 2 groups and coming up with a solution to our predicament. Everybody got back to the cabin safe and in one piece...and we had a story to tell.
I decided to hike back up the rock face we had snowboarded on the day before to finish the day. Got one last run for the day. Another full day with good scenery and adventure...and good company. It was good to get back to the cabin for our last night. Food, drink and a bit of card playing. We had the cabin to ourselves, the 5 of us...until about 9:00pm when Dan spied a headlamp out in the darkness while looking out the window.
Turned out that a young fellow from the Breckenridge area decided to ski up to the cabin for 2 days. He got off work and drove up to the trailhead where we had parked, about 4.5 miles down the mountain. He was familiar with the trail and made a night approach. Impressive...interesting fellow, Weez and I sat up till the middle of the night chatting with him. This was a good day!
The 10th Mountain Hut.
The guys stayed an additional night so they skied out in the morning and climbed the ridge to the north of the cabin.
Yours Truly, just before the snowshoe down off the mountain back to the truck at the trailhead. It was good, with more snow falling. Three days and two nights make an adventure to remember.
Adventure on!!
