Musings: Utter Silence

After my fun of skiing all morning with Jeffey, into the car I went, heading south. Through Breckenridge without stopping and I arrivedat the trail head around 1:30. Into the tele boots, skis off the rack, and hoist the pack to the shoulders. All clipped on and skis ready to glide I ducked into the lesser used trail. At this point it was a bit cloudy and starting to get windy, this did not make me too happy.

The trail was hardly used; only two sets of snowshoe tracks, one set of ski tracks, and a dog (all going the other way). About 30 minutes into the ski the sun popped out and the wind started to die down, good for em but bad for the snow. The snow started to get supper sticky, making the going a bit harder.

After about 3 hours I came into the clearing where the cabin is, problem here was that the clearing is about 4 square miles littered with trees and hills so making out the cabin from down at tree line was difficult. Ditched the skis and hoofed it towards the right and soon realized the old mining structures were up towards the left (oops). Directly below these is were all the cabins were, headed that way and sure enough there was the cabin, under 4 feet of snow. Now I said cabins, because there are actually some ruins of 7 more cabins (just walls and doorways, nothing else). This use to be called Tunderosa and was an extremely remote mining town.

Dropped the pack inside the cabin and went to go grab the skis, but i didn't make a direct line from skis to cabin. Hiked part way up the face behind the cabin and made some turns down to the cabin. This was the BEST snow I've ever felt. Snow that has not been touched all season and still feels like it is the fresh stuff we got back in January. Sinking down to my waist and then once I drop and knee to make the turn it is billowing up to my chest. This was pure wow at its best.

Got to the cabin and started to settle in for the night. Realized I couldn't start a fire due to the 4 feet of snow on the roof, would have smoked myself out. No worries, made some dinner and got in the bag to keep warm. Read a bunch and then fell asleep.

Woke in the morning to birds chirping and sunshine. Made some coffee and oatmeal, packed the bag and was on my way by 10. Arrived at the car around noon after taking a different route back, most of this was down hill since the cabin was about 2000 feet higher than where the car was parked.

I leave you with pictures of my accommodations.