One wonders why anyone would really want to hurry here, because
over the following days, on Paragon Guides' 5-day, 100-mile
mountain bike ride over roads, ruts, and ridgelines - including a
spectacular traverse of the Continental Divide - I will be privy to
some of
Colorado's loveliest backcountry. Equally wonderful, at the
end of each day of privyness we will relax in one of the 10th
Mountain Division Hut Association's quaint lodgings, quaffing cold
beer and consuming heaping hot meals by flickering candlelight and
then falling onto a soft mattress that, after a day of riding,
cradles the muscles in sinful surcease.
It's genius, this mix of wilderness and civilized comfort, a system
of abodes with roofs and warm, crackling fires scattered an active
day's journey apart, that was invented by western European skiers
and hikers and conscripted now by clever outfitters like Vail-based
Paragon Guides. Anyone who has labored through the wilds and then
slept on the hard ground with an even harder bolus of noodles in
their stomach will understand the joy.
There are other hut-to-hut systems, but none finer than those of
the 10th Mountain Division. The first two huts were built in 1982.
Fifteen huts are now available in summer. They are clean,
expansive, and finely placed in God's own hinterland within the
rough triangle of Aspen,
Vail, and Leadville, so that you might
travel just the right distance and then put your feet up on the
porch to ruminate on a vast horizon of pine-swathed mountains and
snowy peaks. Two of the huts have saunas. All have outhouses; none
have running water. In summer, you can hike, horseback ride, and
even ride a llama between these huts, but I chose to mountain bike
for simple reasons. Horses kick, llamas spit, and I like to bike.
And because scattered about the huts are more than 500 miles of
single-track trails and Forest Service dirt roads.