Trip Report An Insane Blizzard

Last Friday was insane. The only thing I have to say about it was that I screwed up and should have cancelled regardless of our reservation at a hut. We decided to try anyway since we could always turn back. Besides the Shrine Mountain cabin is usually a good destination in bad weather since it's usually an easy to follow route.

The kids, my wife, and I left for home to drive to Vail Pass at 1:30 pm Friday. It was extremely windy on the drive and at one point on 20 mile road (between Hayden and Oak Creek) visibly was extremely bad. During one wind gust the road just disappeared in the whiteout so we stopped, but were quickly buried by the snowdrifts. Luckily we were next to the mine. Unluckily though, the blade they were using as the snowplow was also stuck in nearby snowdrifts. At times you could see, but when a gust came up you couldn't see anything. We could see that the mine brought a bulldozer to pull out the plow blade and we walked down to see if they could help us out of the snowdrifts too. While we were talking to them another truck became trapped in the snowdrifts.

Anyway, the bulldozer helped everyone out of the snowdrifts and the wild calmed enough (but still blowing hard) that we all got out of there. The rest of the drive went without incident other than the section of I-70 from Vail to Vail Pass was ridiculously slow and took several hours.

We finally arrived at the trailhead at 8 pm (we originally planned on 4 pm). I have snowshoed up to the Shrine Mountain cabins four times, including three times in the dark, and I know the route well so thought we could make it, even if it was snowing and blowing hard.

We made half a mile up the trail (a very difficult half a mile) before losing the trail completely and not being able to find the markers. We backtracked down to the trailhead since we knew that we could follow the road (closed in winter) up to Shrine Pass.

It sounds easy enough to follow a road in a blizzard, but it wasn’t. We lost the road twice and when we didn’t lose it, it was still extremely difficult to find. The wind was blowing hard enough and the snow was coming down hard enough that you couldn’t see from one side of the road to the other. In fact, with a headlamp on, any light would reflect back on the heavy snow so you couldn’t see at all other than snowflakes in front of your face. We would have to turn the lights off in order to look for markers. . By the time we were over the half way point, it was thought that it was be better to try and reach the cabin that retreat since we speculated that the freeway was probably closed by now anyway. We literally felt our way on the Shrine Pass road by looking for the packed spots. When you hit a deep drift, it was hard

We lost the road at the minor saddle and I set off to find it, which took maybe a half hour. We eventually reached the first sign at Shrine Pass and lost all sign of the road. While Kim and Shaylee stopped at the sign, Kessler and I set up due west using a compass in order to find the outhouses we knew were on the pass proper. We found them, but breaking the trail was difficult, even though it wasn’t very far. I set off south in order to try and locate the trail to the cabins, which I found once in the thick timber.

Kessler and I returned to the sign were we had left Kim and Shaylee and we told them we found the trail. We still lost it a few times, but since the timber provided some shelter, it was easier routefinding to the first cabin. We contemplated crashing in there (we accidentally woke up the occupants and they said we could), but we pushed on to Walters. We lost the trail several times, but found it until near the cabin. By the time we lost it there though the wind died down slightly and we could see the cabin. We broke trail directly to it and arrived completely exhausted at around mid-night. Two others were in the cabin and had hiked up before things got really bad. They thought no one else was going to come, so they moved their stuff and we crashed in there for the night.

Shrine Mountain cabins are actually some of the easier 10^th Mountain Huts to get to in winter. I had never expected that it could ever be that difficult to get there. Since the hut was at 11,223 feet, I imagine that conditions on the mountain tops were really extreme.

Saturday was sunny, calm, and beautiful. There was no sign of the previous maelstrom. We were too tired to climb to the top of Shrine Mountain or Wingle Ridge, which is the usual plan. We head back for hope without incident, though we were very tired.

Sorry, no photographs. I don't know what happened to our camera, but it wasn't present once we reached the cabin and we found no trace of it on the return.