Waken to shafts of sunlight warming your face, uncocoon from your sleeping bag and gaze out a picture window onto a rolling meadow glistening with frost. A half-mile hike through creaking spruce trees brings you to a spring to gather water for breakfast and the day’s upcoming adventure. Clamber onto a rock outcrop and smile at the far peaks painted golden by the morning’s early light. These mountains once teemed with loggers and miners, hard-boiled men carving their livelihood from trees and rock. Most of them are gone now but what remains before you is a spider’s web of old logging and mining routes, running through and across the valleys, streams, and 14,000-foot summits. This is Colorado and you’re here to mountain bike these historic byways.
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The Colorado 10th Mountain Division Hut Association, named after the famed World War II skiing soldiers who trained here, rents out 20 different huts, most above 11,000 feet, in the mountains between Aspen, Leadville and Vail. Modeled after the chalets and refuges of the European Alps, and originally built for backcountry skiers, the cabins have recently been discovered by mountain bikers. Interlinked by over 300 miles of dirt road and trail, they allow multiday tours with minimal gear in unique rustic luxury. There may be no finer way to experience Colorado’s high country. The huts are grand, log-lodge-with-wood-burning-saunas kind of huts. Here, bikers enjoy breakfasts cooked on wood-burning stoves, lounge on a deck with a cup of tea and, when the urge takes them, visit the little wood outhouse, leaving the door open to marvel at the scenery.
Old railroad-grade-turned-dirt-paths lead away from the cabins, inhabited by the ghosts of railroad workers and miners long forgotten. The trail slowly climbs its way to a 12,000-foot pass. With its broad valleys, forests, and mountains stacked upon mountains, this is a place where even locals stop and cry out their love for Colorado.
Here you have the option of traveling with a group and guide or going solo. After spinning across 15 miles of relatively smooth but rarely flat dirt roads, the choice is whether you would like your guide and his assistant to serve you an Italian feast, or whether you would rather retire to the communal kitchen to cook your freeze-dried dinner. Either way, you’ll take comfort in the fact that you haven’t even thought about email or looked in a mirror for two days. This, and the fact that you’ve got three more days of staying in high-alpine cabins and exploring some of America’s most beautiful mountains on your bike.
The majority of the huts can be linked via technically tame dirt roads, while singletrack options can be tacked on for the expert rider. Expect to spend between four to six hours on your bike per day. Even if you go with an outfitter, the guides will let you set your own pace and will always have a support vehicle bringing up the rear in case you need mechanical help or a lift over a tough climb. Hut-to-hut distances range from 10 to 25 miles, often with several-thousand-foot climbs in air containing entirely too little oxygen, so while you needn’t be a technician on the bike, you do need to be reasonably fit. Riding a couple hours, two to three times a week, for a month or two before the trip would be bare-bones training. Going sans guide requires keen map-reading skills, as route marking is minimal to nonexistent. You must reserve a hut in advance (970-925-5775, www.huts.org); they cost from $22 to $35 per person per night. Bring a sleeping bag and food; the huts have beds (communal style), are stocked with kitchen equipment and provide million-dollar outhouse views.
TIMBERLINE BICYCLE TOURS, USA
Timberline has been guiding bike trips in the area for 17 years and offers hut trips for all abilities.Timberline Bike Tours of Aspen is licensed by the White River National Forest to provide guided day and overnight bicycle tours. Our permitted area includes the finest mountain bike trails in Colorado. Utilizing the 10th Mountain Division Hut Association, we offer back country single track tours. ours implement Leave No Trace policies to minimize impact on the National Forest. Sound back country ethics are central to Timberline Bike Tours' philosophy of low impact enjoyment of the forest.
Contact:
730 E. Cooper
Aspen, Colorado
Tel: 970 274-6076
Web: http://www.timberlinebike.com/
PARAGON GUIDES, USA
Paragon offers a 100-mile trip that circumnavigates the Holy Cross Wilderness. Paragon Guides is one of Colorado's premier guide services providing quality outdoor adventures since 1978, throughout the White River National Forest of the central Rocky Mountain region and along the now famous 10th Mountain Division Hut System. Offer a variety of backcountry adventures including hut-to-hut backcountry skiing, llama trekking, mountain biking, wilderness camping, mountaineering, backcountry fishing and classic rock climbing.
Tel( toll-free): 1.877.926.5299
Web: http://www.paragonguides.com