Sangree Froelicher Hut

On Thursday, March 27, we set off for Leadville in the morning for our hike to the Sangree Froelicher Hut. Brian was feeling somewhat better and decided he was well enough to make the trip.

Leadville is a mining town located about 20 miles south of Copper Mountain. Finding the trailhead proved to be no easy task. The directions that we’d printed said the parking area was marked with public parking signs. It was, in fact, marked but the signs were about 100 feet from the road in the woods. The turnoff itself looked like someone’s driveway.

Fortunately, the trail was marked much better than the parking was. The trail was 3.5 miles long and gained close to 1500’ of elevation. Much of it followed a creek drainage and was wooded. That was nice since it was a windy day and the trees helped buffer us against the wind.

Near the end of the trail, one of Amy’s snowshoes lost a screw connecting the binding to the claw. She managed to wiggle the claw back into place so that she could keep using the shoe until we got to the cabin and could perform better repairs.

Upon reaching the cabin, Brian went directly to bed. Sarah and Amy had lunch and played games for most of the afternoon. The game selection was a bit thinner than at Janet’s cabin, but there was at least a full deck of cards.

After dinner, the moon had risen and we went out on the porch to get some photos. Here’s Amy hanging out on the porch:


This is the amazing view from the porch area:




Brian stood on the picnic table to get a better angle.


Sarah’s cold and about ready to go inside.


Luckily, the hut had a number of windows so you didn’t have to be outside to enjoy the great views.

Unlike the trip to Janet’s Cabin, when the cabin was less than half full, Sangree Froelicher’s was completely full this night. Because many of the people staying there had been there the previous night as well, we weren’t fortunate enough to get one of the two smaller rooms and had to stay in the bunk room. It was amazingly quiet considering that there were 16 people there, 10 of them sleeping in the same room. Amazingly enough, nobody snored!

Here’s the bunk room in the morning after everyone had packed up:


Here’s about half of the kitchen. It even had a wood-burning oven, though nobody was daring enough to try it out.


This is the lounging area. Notice the large pot of snow on the stove – this is how you get water at the hut. It takes a lot of snow to melt enough water for that many people!


Here’s the dining area, with Amy ready to go.


Sarah and Amy took time to pose for a photo before leaving.


Looking back at the hut:



Unfortunately, the snowshoe repairs didn’t hold for too long. Since the trail was quite packed, she decided to walk the rest of the way down in just her boots instead of trying a second round of repairs.


We took a few more photos down the valley before we continued out.



You can tell it was another beautiful, sunny day. Amy managed to visit for an entire week and we got only about half an inch of snow one night. The rest of the time it was just like this day.

Saturday morning, Sarah and Amy got up before the crack of dawn so Sarah could take Amy back to the airport. We sent her with Brian’s skis and some other random winter stuff that we wouldn’t be using anymore this season. She was a good sport about being weighted down with a bunch of additional stuff. Her suitcase weighed close to 70 pounds when we got it onto the scale at the airport so we had to rearrange at the last minute.

After Amy was on her way, Sarah ran some errands in Denver and then met up with a college friend, Crystie, for lunch. Crystie and her husband live in Colorado Springs now and came up to Denver for the day. Sarah hadn’t seen Crystie in years, so it was great fun to catch up.