A Weekend at the Fritz Benedict Hut outside Aspen Colorado

When in [insert place], do as the [people who live in place] do. For Colorado, that’s going into the mountains. At all times of the year. Especially winter. I grew up between a beach and a swamp in southern Virginia, so I had neither mountains nor snow for my youth. And moving around in Virginia only gave me marginal mountains and crappy snow. So moving to Colorado provided a contrast.

Winter Camping School
Practice Hut
Fritz Benedict Hut

I am not a skier (that’s another story), but H & I bought snowshoes soon after arriving and we find time to stomp around some snowy trails each winter.

About when I decided to climb all the Fourteeners, it also occurred to me that I wanted to spend a night outside camping in the mountains during the winter. Why? Maybe to get out of my comfort zone. But everybody needs goals, so that was one for me. Having absolutely no idea how to go about doing this, in 2019 I signed up for a class.

Winter Camping School

The Colorado Mountain Club has a number of useful classes, one of which is their Winter Camping School. It was thorough. And by thorough I mean 3 lectures, 2 day trips for skills practice, & 2 overnights kind of thorough. They had us building tent platforms, constructing kitchens, and building snow caves. There was about a dozen of us in our group — instructors and students — and it was great fun. And by the end of it I was confident that I could spend a night out in winter and not die.

My big takeaway from winter camping, however, was that I didn’t like winter camping. I’m not a big fan of camping to begin with, but I’ll do it to make other activities possible (long hiking, early start for climbing). But unless you’re spending a couple of nights out, winter camping takes way too much effort for you to do any of those other activities.

Besides, why winter camp when there are huts.

Practice Hut

If you want to spend a night in Colorado’s snowy wilderness, rent a hut. The mountain huts are cabins that you can reserve all or part of, that have firewood and propane supplied for heating & cooking, and that have mattresses you put a sleeping bag on top of. The 10th Mountain Division Hut Association owns or manages over 30 huts, and in 2020 I booked the Continental Divide Cabin as a first practice hut. Since it’s 0.8 mi / 1.3 km from the Tennessee Pass trailhead with only 100 ft / 30 m of elevation gain, if something is amiss, the car’s close by.

I modified a sled to make a pulk: a small, human-pulled sled. I added runners underneath so it wouldn’t slide off a slope and ran the rope through poles so it wouldn’t run into you going downhill. It allowed us to bring in a little too much beer, so my photos are limited.

But it was a success and I felt confident enough to book a few huts and plans a few trips for the 2020-21 winter. What could go wrong?

Fritz Benedict Hut

Of course COVID screwed up my winter plans. Instead of having a winter full of hut-to-hut trips, all that didn’t get cancelled was the Fritz Benedict hut.

The Benedict Huts (Fritz and Fabi), built in 1997 and located outside of Aspen, are named in honor of Fritz Benedict a member of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division and planner of a number of ski resorts in Colorado. He also helped to found the 10th Mountain Division Hut Association in the 1980s. There are two huts, one named for Fritz (sleeps 10) and the other for his wife Fabi (sleeps 6) that share an outhouse.

As I tried and failed to get others to join us, the hut trip consisted of H, Mike, and me. There’s a lower and and an upper trailhead for Hunter Creek, but the upper one has only two spots for hut parking and is usually used for dropping off gear. But we were lucky enough to grab a spot at the upper trailhead , shaving off about a mile of walking from the lower one.

I pulled the pulk. I strained snowshoeing up Smugglers Mountain. I had never sweated that much in 20ºF (-7ºC) temperatures. But after the trail leveled out H & Mike took their turns pulling. A little over 4 hours from setting off, we arrived at the hut.

The hut was in great condition. It was clean & well-designed with a nice lounge area around the stove to hang out at. It’s got solar panels for the lights, but no USB chargers like the Continental Divide Cabin had. We shortly had a fire going and the interior warmed. Bang! — a bag of potato chips, which was already taut like a balloon when we started up, loudly burst open on the table as the altitude and heat finally got to be too much. But that was the evening only drama.

Dinner was pasta & Bolognese sauce I had cooked earlier in the week, with garlic bread and salad. Food always tastes better outside, and good food tastes exceptional. This is why I hauled that pulk-full-of-food up here.

The next day we went for a snowshoe down to the nearby Warren Lake. The clear and blue sky made an ordinary excursion almost magical. Then for the afternoon, we just relaxed in someplace that wasn’t our house. It’s always nice to get out, but during the pandemic year it was as good as a three-week vacation. By the afternoon you could clearly see Castle, Conundrum, & Cathedral Peaks to the south.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the outhouse. Rather, the FABULOUS outhouse. Two sides are floor to ceiling glass, giving you a 180º view — which includes the best vantage to see Pyramid Peak (which Mike & I climbed in 2019).

By late afternoon, those southern peaks disappeared as a front rolled in and snow began to come down. We’d finished our wood & water chores, so we just had some whiskey, watched the storm, and talked. Dinner was slow-cooked beef roast with potatoes and sautéed green beans. By then the snow was coming down pretty heavily.

Sunday morning we awoke to about 12 in / 30 cm of snow. After pancakes and bacon, we completed all of our checklist activities (the 10th Mtn Hut folks are very clear about that) and by 09:00 we were ready to leave. The snow hadn’t totally covered the trail, but it was now just a slight indentation in the landscape. The still air allowed the new snow to cling even to the topmost pine branches. The clouds cleared and gave us another sunny day for our exit, making the snowshoe back to the car quite pleasant.

Greg, Heather, & Mike Outside Fritz Benedict Hut — Greg, Heather, &Mike Outside Fritz Benedict Hut

I really can’t recommend huts enough, the Benedict huts especially. The experience is singular. If you can snowshoe (and there’s really nothing to it), a number of huts are within your grasp. Reservations can be a hassle and you have a fair amount of prep work to ensure things go smoothly. But there’s no need for any winter camping. If you’re in Colorado, you know what to do.

Benedict Huts from Upper Hunter Creek TH