Eiseman Hut Ski Trip – Day 3

Eiseman Hut, hut trip, skiing | UltraRob | Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

This year’s Eiseman Hut ski trip pictures | Last year’s hut trip pictures

Wednesday morning I felt much better than I had Tuesday morning and I hadn’t slept so late. Tom and Jaime were wanting to get a few more runs in before they had to head out a day early than the rest of us. I had been debating whether to leave with them since I had been feeling so fatigue. Hanging out and getting some extra relaxation in the hut was nice but I was thinking I’d rather keep another day of vacation for when I could really hammer and abuse myself. I had driven David and Matthew up but I could leave my vehicle for them and get a ride with Tom. I discussed it with the rest of the the group and they were fine with me leaving early but they encouraged me to stay and take do some more relaxing. I decided to wait to make a final decision until after I had done some skiing.

Tuesday afternoon the top zipper slider had broken into a couple pieces. I had somewhat held the zipper together with a couple safety pins for a while then it came apart. When I quit skiing I was tired and then forgot about fixing it. I was still working on it when the other guys were ready to head out so I told them to stop by on the way up.

It had snowed another couple inches overnight but not enough to cover up our tracks. The snow was still great and I got in a couple good runs. After only 2 runs I was feeling tired again and decided to head out with Tom and Jaime. They did one more run but I went in ate some lunch and got my stuff packed up.

There have been years when the Spraddle Creek route has been scary because of being packed and icy. Even going off the trail didn’t help because I’d fly over the crust until a ski would break through and stop. I’d then slam face first into the snow and my pack would further slam me into the snow. A couple times we’ve gone out the longer Red Sandstone Road to avoid it and hitched a ride or called a taxi to get back to the Spraddle Creek Trailhead.

This year there was no worry about that. We were more worried about having to break trail. Jaime wanted to get through the trees on the way down to the Middle Creek drainage. I thought we were going too far right but Jaime generally has a really sense of direction so I didn’t say anything at first. Finally Tom pulled out the mapped and GPS and we were indeed much too far to the right. When we ski on the trail, we can see some cliffs up in the area we were in. We couldn’t tell from that map that we were above any but sometimes they fit between contour lines. Fortunately we were able to drop down and rejoin the trail without running into any cliffs. Normally we make it back to the trailhead in about 2 hours but with all the fresh snow we had to work more and it took over 3 hours. I had another fun time at the Eiseman Hut even though I was worn out from being sick the week before.