Highlights from a 5-day cross-country backpacking trip to the 10th Mountain Huts in central Colorado.
Techno-nerds see below for an excuse for these photos.
| The first two nights were spent at Uncle Bud's Cabin, 11,370', a long 5.5 mile ski from a trailhead at Turquoise Lake, just outside of Leadville.
| 
|
|
| | There's plenty of good drinking water--from melting snow.
|
|
| | Those are long, lonely trails between the huts.
|
|
| | Often, all signs of the trail disappear, and there are no blazes where there are no trees.
|
|
| | Breaking the trail is a lot of work. The soft, fluffy snow does not provide much support.
|
|
| | A two-mile day trip above 10th Mountain Hut gets us to Slide Lake in a cirque beneath Homestake Peak. It's hard to see in the picture, but there's evidence of a huge avalanche that recently broke through the ice in the distance.
|
|
| Below are two photos from the yearly ski-joring competition in Leadville. Never heard of ski-joring? See if the pictures give you some idea. Hint: the guy on the left is trying to loop hanging rings on a stick in his hand. This must be a very important event, because a mile of Main St. is purposely covered with a couple feet of snow.
| |
|
|
