Finally returned to the southern San Juans for a hut trip with the usual suspects and a couple of new faces. We stayed at the Aladdin's Lamp Hut located 4 miles south of Silverton along the Animas River. The approach to the hut was a tortuous 200 yards from the car, which made it convenient for the day trip to Silverton Mountain. The A-frame hut was quaint and included a roomy upstairs room that slept 8 comfortably and a main floor equipped with a full kitchen, dining area, wood-burning stove and even a corner nook with two sofa chairs for lounging. The front deck was surprisingly huge and the outhouse was conveniently attached via a mud room-hallway accessed from the back door.
The meals were great. I made fajitas one night with Spanish rice, fresh limes and two choices of Mexican beer. Not the usual hut trip given the proximity to the car, but that only meant we could live it up a bit more. In fact, I think between the 6 of us, we had 5 bottles of aged single malt Scotch and enough cigars to last any one person at least a year. That said, scotch and cigars were depleted by the end of the trip.
Unfortunately, the timing of our trip couldn't have come at a worse time. The southern San Juans hadn't seen any new snow in more than a month and we were in the in-between stage of mid-winter and spring conditions (even though it was mid-February). Temps soared into the upper 30s and low 40s and the snowpack was transitioning into spring corn, but not quite there yet. The day and night temps were perfect for a corn cycle, but I think the low sun angle kept it from just quite making it there. Needless to say, we toured around the hut, found some really fun tree skiing and eye balled some stellar hourglass couloirs on the south and east faces of Grand Turk, which I'll visit on another trip.
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