I am a big fan of the Peter Estin Hut. There is something about looking at the imposing climb from the parking lot at Yeoman Park that excites me. I also think it has great skiing around the hut. The mountains around the hut are big, and the panoramic view is enormous and humbling.
I like taking the Hat Creek Trail, which starts by following the road to Fulford Cave, then winds up a forest till you get near the top, where it opens up. Soon you will soon emerge from the trees at the front door of the hut.

Combining two of the best huts into a hut to hut trip makes for one of my favorite things to do. We spend two nights at each hut, but I mostly love the time and solitude spent trekking between both huts.
For this trip, I like to start with Estin Hut, and then head over to Polar Star via Hat Creek and the Newcomer trails. You could always go back down to the car if you needed to drop off your trash or grab new supplies, but we've been fortunate to have other people do this for us.

McNamara is one of the orignal huts, and is one of my favorites. To start, you can't beat the hike starting and ending in Aspen. The trail is well marked out and well hiked, as many local Aspen residents use it for snowshoing and backcountry skiing. Like benedict hut, one of the best parts of the hike is looking behind and watching the aspen ski resort fall behind, and the majestic Maroon Bells begin to appear. The skiing off of Bald Knob is top notch, and the 360 degree view from the top is one of the best.

The Benedict Hut was a decievingly difficult climb for us. It was made longer by the fact that we had to park at the lower lot and had new snow to deal with. When you look at the topo, there doesn't seem to be anything extrordinary, but the climb keeps going and takes it's toll. As you climb, you can look back and watch Aspen move further away. Our trip took so long we had to pull out our headlamps to finish the way, and we quite relieved when we made it to the hut. The hut itself is welcoming and very nice. It definitely has one of the coolest bathrooms in the wilderness, with a giant window for your viewing pleasure. It also came with sleds and a luge course, which was really fun. There are great treks to take around the hut.

Janet's cabin is a relatively easy hut to get to (especially if you use the chairlift), except for the very end, were it tempts you with a view of the cabin, even though you are a few hundred feet below it. One of the nicer features you can opt in on in this hike is a lift ride from Copper Mountain Resort to the trail. Of course, you can always hike from the base of the lift, but it's nice to use the lift system (as long as you are comfortable with carrying your pack on the lift). There is great skiing around the hut, and it's great that you get to ski right to the hut, instead of having to trek out and back. There's also a nice sauna to relax in, as well as an indoor bathroom.

Vance's Cabin is a 10th Mountain hut, is located near Tennessee Pass and the Ski Cooper Resort, between camp Hale and Leadville. There are three levels to the hut, a lower sleeping quarters, a middle common area, and a loft. The hut sleeps a total of sixteen people, ten in the lower area, and 6 in the loft. The lower area suffers from a lack of heat, so I usually try to get the loft. It's located in a wooded area, with an open field where it looks like they took the timber to build the hut. For Skiing, you are going to either ski at the Resort, or head over to Chicago Ridge. There are a few ways to get up to Vance's Cabin: you can get to it from 10th Mountain Division Camp Hale, Ski Cooper, or as a hut to hut from Jackyl. The route I took was (of course) the simplest. Starting at 10,400 feet and going as high as 11,000 feet, there is only about 600 vertical feet of elevation over three miles, with no significantly hard sections.

To get to the Continental Divide Cabin, the simplest way is to take Highway 24 to Tennessee Pass. The trailhead is located on the west side of the road, across the street from both "Ski Cooper" and the 10th Mountain Memorial. Looking towards the west, you will take the Colorado Trail or Continental Divide Trail. The hike itself is less than a mile at about .66 miles. The hut itself is one of the nicest huts I have been in. I have done a winter and summer trip to the hut. There are ample cross country trails, and you can still get to the tenth mountain hut and ski that terrain.

Tenth Mountain Division Hut is a classic! The memorabilia in the hut is enough to absorb you into the history of the soldiers. The hut has a great deck with a table pointing out the mountains in your view. A classic hike is to make it up to Slide Lake, Once you get up there, every way down funnels you back to the hut. If you are more adventurous, climbing to the top of Homestake Peak is also a day trip.

I've done this going from Tenth Mountain to Uncle Buds. It is one of the more challenging hut to hut trips, as it is long, travels through wilderness, and ends with a nice climb. When you move into the wilderness, there are no longer blue diamonds to guide you, and you need to rely on blazes on the trees. We had the fortune of being the first to traverse it after new snow, and all tracks were gone, and the blazes were covered in snow. Luckily we had good maps and gps data, so we were able to navigate our way. Needless to say, there is nothing better than smelling the fire from the hut, seeing the tracks and finally Uncle Bud's hut!

Uncle Bud's hut is one of my personal favorites as a hut to hut combined with either Skinner Hut or Tenth Mountain Hut. It has great skiing around Galena Mountain, and has some of the best tenth mountain memorabilia, telling the story of Bud Winter. The trail to Uncle Bud's is located outside of Leadville. The first part of the trail is on the road that wraps around Tourquiose Lake, so it is very gradual and is shared with snowmobilers. It the cuts up into the trees following a jeep trail the rest of the way. It is a moderate hike, and the accessibility makes this one of the more popular huts to visit. The Hut has 2 private bedrooms, 1 with 6 beds, 1 with 4 beds, and a communal sleeping area with 1 double bed and 4 single beds.

The hike to Skinner Hut is long and hard and should not be taken lightly. There is an alternate route which approaches avalanche zones, so I don't care to go near there. Instead I take the long way, with the dreaded losing of 600 vertical feet on a two mile down hill. Skinner Hut was the very first hut that I went to, and it taught me some lessons that I use to this very day: Get in shape for a hut trip, start early, travel light, study maps and have an idea of where you are going as best you can. I learned most of these the hard way, being lost, in a blizzard, in the dark, out of water, trying to find skinner hut. All in all, Skinner Hut will earn your respect, and it's worth the challenge once you get there.I think the elevation profile says it all, it's long and steep. The good news is that the first 8 miles are all on a road that is well traversed by snow mobiles. I used kick wax on my tele boards to make the climb up easier. While the road is downhill, it's not like you are on a ski run, so there is some work involved. Finally you get to a park where you connect with the colorado trail, and you head into the trees into the start of a steep climb to skinner hut. The trail is marked with blue diamonds, and the last push to the saddle was especially hard for our trip because we were breaking trail.

Grueling! Ironically, this was my first experience with the hut system, and, even with the experience, I somehow fell in love with hut trips! This has to be one of the most difficult hut to hut trips you will ever do. We did it by doing Skinner first, spent two nights, then a night of winter camping between the two, and finally a night at Uncle Bud's. Nothing about this was easy!

The hike is relatively painless: a 3.7 mile hike that has about a 1,200 vertical feet elevation gain. There is fine skiing around the hut. You will have to climb about 600 vertical feet to get around tree line, and, while the top was wind blown, there was some great open powder runs that bleed into the woods. From there you have great panoramic views from Breckenridge to Keystone