About Gravity Haus Overnight Experiences
Gravity Haus creates best-in-class experiences that welcome our community to spend time in reverence of the great outdoors, where you’ll embrace your inner adventurer, disconnect from the grind of daily life, and develop relationships with your fellow Gravity Haus members as you create memories outside, together.
About This Trip
This adventure is the perfect introduction to the skills necessary to confidently take those first steps and venture into the backcountry during the winter. Join us on this 3-day course to learn the ins and outs of backcountry travel in the winter and how to properly execute a winter hut trip. Over the span of this course, you will be taught the basics of traveling into the winter backcountry via skis or splitboard and will also spend time learning the proper etiquette to using a backcountry hut.
Value of This Trip
What You’ll Learn
FAQ
Itinerary
2 Weeks Prior
Friday, January 6
Saturday, January 7
Sunday, January 8
Trip Package Includes
Trip Package Does Not Include
About The High Lonesome Hut
The Millers invite you to visit the High Lonesome Hut, located on a 160 acres of meadow and spruce forest surrounded by the Arapaho National Forest.
Travel the 2.5 mile long trail to the Hut by hiking, mountain biking, cross country skiing or snowshoeing – on horseback, or by any non-motorized method you choose. The High Lonesome Hut makes a great base camp for adventures during any time of the year.
At the Hut you will find all the creature comforts, including solar generated electricity, hot and cold running water, an indoor toilet, a shower and space for you and eleven of your friends to sleep.
History of High Lonesome Hut
Andrew Miller grew up in his family’s ski lodge, where ski vacations meant staying in pine paneled rooms and eating family style at long tables – meeting new ski buddies at Millers Idlewild Inn in Winter Park. As a teenager he visited European huts, similar to cabins being built in the Colorado mountains. He began a search for a site for a cabin, finding the Lonesome Hut property in 1995. Family and friends jumped into the foray, a mad summer of road building and remote construction – fed by an old Chevy one ton named Frankenstein – resulted in the cabin being opened (in a pretty rustic state) for Christmas. Only trouble was, the frenetic construction schedule had left the cabin without a winter supply of firewood. Numerous boot packed trails led to new stumps through a huge snow winter as Miller carried log after log to feed the hungry pot belly stove.
For the past 27 years, the cabin has hosted 23 blind skiers from England (and several other not-as-large groups from Winter Park’s National Center for the Disabled), several Middle Park High School science classes on overnight trips, a group of at risk teenage boys from the Lost and Found School in Denver who built a neat trail named after their school – while begging me to let them use the chain saw “just once!”, a few marriage proposals and many other events I know, or should not know about. Lonesome Hut LLC is now a group effort, my partners in this enterprise lend their energy to a refuge we hope you will enjoy.
Access to HLH
The Hut is at the end of an easily traversed trail which may be traveled by any non-motorized method. Dogs are welcome. One group comes in yearly by dog sled. Others bring their horses, a corral is available. You will climb about 600 vertical feet on the way in while traveling well below the hazards of higher terrain. The Hut sits at 9,300 feet.
Surrounding terrain will entertain back country travelers of every ability. Many High Lonesome visitors are first time hut users. The Hut is accessible to anyone in good physical condition and is an excellent playground for children.
Hut Facilities
The High Lonesome Hut provides extremely comfortable lodging in the wild.
The three story hut has a wood stove, firewood, running water with an indoor flush toilet, a shower, hot and cold running water, solar electricity, games, mattresses and kitchen utensils (pots, pans and settings for twelve). You provide….sleeping bags and food!
The basement of the hut has a wood stove and plenty of firewood. The main floor consists of a kitchen, dining area, bathroom, guitar, CD player and a small sleeping area. There are two bedrooms in the loft.