Colorado’s Berthoud Pass Gets Backcountry Hut — More on the Way

While Colorado’s Tenth Mountain Division huts are hugely popular, there’s been a movement of late to add more backcountry huts in the Rocky Mountain state. Now, in Grand County, in a line heading north of Winter Park, a new hut system is cropping up run by the Grand Huts Association. The new huts will both update some older structures and, if they nail the fundraising, build five new ones, so that skiers, hikers, and cyclists could string together multi-day adventures in the high country just west of Rocky Mountain National Park.

The first is Broome Hut, half completed with construction halted for winter. It lies just below treeline on the northern slope of Berthoud Pass at 11,200 feet. The goal of the non-profit Grand Huts Association isn’t just to make huts, though. It’s to provide infrastructure that’s open to the public on both public and private lands and also to reduce some of the load on the ecosystem that either larger structures or less environmentally sensitive structures might cause.

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