Betty Bear hut

Amelie's first vacation was at 3 weeks to the Betty Bear hut, which is one of the backcountry huts in the 10th Mountain Division Hut system. The 10th Mountain system has about 20 huts around Colorado, and they're really popular in the winter for backcountry skiing. "Hut" is a bit of a misnomer-- most of them are really nice cabins, albeit without indoor plumbing. We took our first hut trip a couple years ago when Logan was almost one. Eventually we'd like to visit all of them.

Most of the huts sleep 16, so if you only book a few of those spaces, you could end up sharing the hut with strangers. While our kids are really cute, they're a little less cute when they're waking up crying every 2 hours in the middle of the night, and we didn't really want to share that experience with others. We watched the online reservation system and waited until the last minute to book to ensure we chose a hut we'd have to ourselves. We had a few options, and decided on Betty Bear because it had the nicest views and the best sleeping arrangements (3 private rooms in addition to the communal sleeping area) should another party sneek in a reservation at the 11th hour.

While you have to ski in during the winter (sometimes as much as 10 miles), you can drive right up to many of the huts via forest service roads in the summer. We made sure we picked a hut that had road access. We did not, however, look at the condition of said roads until after we had booked. It turned out 4WD was highly recommended for access to this hut. At first I scoffed at this; maybe a regular person needs 4WD, but not a highly skilled/ reckless driver like Mark. Upon digging a little deeper and seeing pictures of the stream crossings though, we decided we'd better bring the van out of its early retirement.

Mark spent a day working on the van and getting it going again, and we drove it around the neighborhood for good measure. It was ready for our adventure! Until it wasn't. The morning we were due to leave, it would not start. So, we loaded into the Honda Civic with a mountain bike on the back as our backup plan in case Mark had to go for help.

The hut was about 15 miles west of Leadville. We figured an hour and a half to Leadville, another hour for the 15 miles on bumpy roads, and we'd be there in about 2 and a half hours. It ended up taking 5 and a half. We vastly underestimated how often we would have to stop to move rocks, evaluate the options for getting over a particularly bad section, and build dams to redirect streams (which did not work anyway). Logan was a funny commentator during all of this. "You don't drive on rocks, you walk on rocks!" He also learned some new bad words during the particularly tense sections that he quickly started repeating. In the end we only got there because we couldn't stand the thought of turning around and going back over what we'd already navigated.

Around hour 4, we crested a hill, came around a bend, and ran into a pretty good sized river flowing across the road. It was about a foot deep and 30 feet wide.  We had our doubts, particularly since we once killed a rental car trying to ford a similar body of water while on TDY in Phoenix, but the Honda made it!

Betty Bear hut. We stayed 2 nights and had the place to ourselves.  There was no TV or internet-- that was my favorite part.

View from the hut

Inside the hut. There was one big room upstairs that included a living room, kitchen, and dining tables.  All the beds were downstairs.

There was a cart by the road to transport all our stuff up to the cabin.  My dad had a cart just like this I used to ride in.

There was a really pretty little lake near the hut. Unfortunately, the mosquitos really liked it too.

Logan & Mark rock hopping around the lake

Logan loves lakes. He was undeterred by the freezing water.

There were a million wildflowers... more than I've ever seen

Hiking.  We attempted to make it to the top of a nearby hill.   There was no trail, however, and after bushwhacking through dense forest with many stream and fallen log crossings, we decided to head back along the road.

Making s'mores

Logan

Me and Amelie

Mark & Logan