Ludlow Ski Hut

Context

Bill Ludlow died in 1953 while instructing a class on heavy equipment for the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He was tragically only 23 years old when he perished. However, his legacy lives on in Ludlow Hut, an A-frame financed in equal parts by Bill Ludlow’s family and the Sierra Club. The hut was constructed in 1955 by a series of work parties. Notes from the construction can be found on the Clair Tappan Lodge website and are a lesson in brevity. For instance, the fourth work party over the weekend of August 6th writes:

Kids weekend — 5 under 2 years — livened the two days that saw floor poured, roof shingles go on & most of the end sheathing installed. Ned and Brooks waking camp by shingling roof at 5:30am. The weekend of the dead and smelly cows. After a hard day’s work, the truck loaded with tools and baby equipment went flying down the road when Merritt accidentally pulled the dump lever and everything was strewn along the road.

In any event, last week (January 15th), I was invited by friends Sam and Catherine to join them for a three-day trip at the Ludlow Hut the weekend of January 22nd. Tahoe had not seen fresh snow for two weeks, and none was forecasted before the trip, but in the interest of sociability and possible corn, I quickly agreed to join. Most of the 13-person crew that signed up was coming from South Lake, Truckee, or Reno, so it looked like I was going to be driving up from Palo Alto by myself—never an ideal situation. However, we had a bit of extra space, so I extended an invite to a couple of friends, and lo and behold, Gus was interested in joining!

Day 1

Gus and I departed my house in Palo Alto at 5:10 AM, or at least that was our plan. Gus showed up at 5:05 AM, but I was still making coffee and toasting a bagel, so our departure was delayed to 5:13 AM. One point to Gus, zero points to Paxton.

We parked near the Rubicon Trail trailhead a block or so off McKinney Road in a pull-out that looked reasonable and didn’t have any obvious no-parking signs. We started skinning up towards the hut at about 10 AM. The approach could not be accused of dullness. A 4x4 truck driver had decided to test himself (or herself, but probably himself) against the challenges of a snowy Rubicon Trail and made it about four miles in before turning around and driving back the way he came. For his efforts, we were left with a road with two deep trenches that at times went down to ground level and were generally a cause of much consternation. To avoid the torn-up road, we largely skinned to one side of it or the other and were rewarded with numerous stream crossings, some of which had a nice snow bridge and others which required a “spreddie” to cross.

The above-referenced spreddie.

Once we made it to Lily Lake, the day improved — we skinned across the lake and set our own track to the cabin.

We made it to the hut in about 2.5 hours and were bemused to find the lock on the second story of the A-frame. I generously let Gus have the privilege of climbing the ladder and coming to let me in through the front door.

An optimistic design that assumes the lower level may be blocked by snow.

As I watched Gus enter the second story, a thought occurred to me: “Hey Gus, there are sleeping mats up there, yeah?”

“No,” says Gus, “I don’t think there are.” Uh oh. That is not good at all. The recent huts I have been to, including the very modest Tuolumne Meadows ski hut, have all had sleeping mats. I had just assumed this hut would as well. But it was not the case.

The living room, however, has a couch, and beneath the kitchen counter we found an old, thin blue foam pad. We were in business. In this scenario, one of us could sleep on the blue pad and the other on the couch. I quickly claimed the blue pad, as our friends were arriving later in the evening, and if any of them had made a similar mistake, I wanted to make sure I claimed the valuable foam first.

We ate lunch and dropped sleeping bags and food and such things, and then skied up to Lost Corner Mountain with the goal of harvesting corn on the southern side. We did not harvest any corn, but we did have some nice views out towards Lake Tahoe and north towards the west shore peaks (Rubicon, Hidden, Jakes, Tallac) and into Desolation.

A pleasant view from the top of Lost Corner Mountain.

From Lost Corner, we skied over to Sourdough Hill and had our best ski runs of the day down the south-east face of Sourdough. We made it back to the hut just as the sun was setting, and Sam, Deirdre, Catherine, and Jill were arriving.

For the next couple of hours, we entertained ourselves by getting the fires going, setting out our sleeping arrangements, and attempting to split wood with an ax so dull that it bludgeoned rather than split.

We heated up our burritos on top of the fire and melted snow for water. We washed the pots before filling them with water, as they appeared to contain some small brown objects that looked suspiciously like mouse pellets.

As we were eating, Kyle, Lauren, and Jasmine showed up. They arrived in the dark, having started skinning after work. They had started with a sled but abandoned it after the first creek crossing, and Kyle had instead hauled the 100-liter North Face duffel up to the hut on his back.

Among many other random objects, the 100-liter duffel contained about a pound of dice, and after dinner the nine of us played a couple rounds of Liar’s Dice. What an excellent game for a hut! It is enough skilled to keep it engaging but enough luck-based that just going off vibes can make for a successful strategy.

Day 2

The wind started blowing early in the morning, around maybe 4 AM, and by the time it got light, I could see cracks of light through the door that would change in size as the door got pushed back and forth by the breeze.

By 6:45 AM, I had had enough time lying on the ground, so I got up and walked downstairs and used the bathroom—a peculiar design that involves descending down a ladder into a tight space with two separate toilet seats about 18 inches apart—and then started a fire in both of the two stoves in the hut.

We had discussed wake-up time the day before and left it vaguely at ~7 AM, and by 7:30 most folks were up. Kyle heated up water on the Coleman griddle (he had carried four green propane bottles), and we collectively ate breakfast consisting of a range of oatmeals, granola, and freeze-dried items.

Catherine was the first to get the itch to ski, and I initially committed myself and Gus to join her with an 8:35 departure. However, the rest of the crew that was skiing seemed like they were also about to depart, so we decided to wait for them to get their gear together, and all eight of us were skinning by about 9 AM. We went back to the top of Lost Corner in conditions significantly less nice than the day before. The wind was whipping near the summit, so we transitioned on the east, leeward side and began to ski down the south face in search of corn. No corn was to be found, but what we did find is that the logistical challenges of skiing in a group of eight are considerable. First, we waited for a couple of people to consult and figure out whether they were going to join us or go back to the hut. Then we tried to have a group conversation in a 50-mph wind to decide whether we were going to drop down the steep west-facing bowl. Kyle dropped solo, and everyone else decided that the bowl actually looked really nasty and windy. The remaining seven of us continued to traverse and descend north, and those seven eventually fractured until only Gus, Catherine, and I remained to ski low-angle firm snow in the direction of Rubicon Reservoir.

Gus exhibits excellent upper-lower body separation.

Down towards Rubicon Reservoir with Desolation in the background.

We continued skiing until linking separate patches of snow between large exposed sections of granite became too tricky, and then put skins on and slowly returned from whence we had come.

We had the idea that once we got back up to the PCT, we could traverse around Lost Corner Mountain and make it back to the hut. However, once we ripped off skins, we realized that we had been naive in our assessment of the topo lines, and after side-stepping over a handful of logs and pushing along on flat terrain, we admitted defeat, put our skins back on, and walked back to the summit of Lost Corner Mountain, ripped skins, and skied some breakable crust back to the hut.

At the hut, the folks that had skied up Saturday (Jenna, Thomas, and Jesse) had arrived, and we walked into a spirited game of cards. There was not sufficient room at the table to admit more card players, so we ate lunch on the other picnic table, and I listened wistfully to the shouts of elation and sorrow from the card players.

Lunch was complete, and with the card game still going on, we joined Catherine and Jenna for a lap of Sourdough Hill. Jenna had just moved to California from Fairbanks and was so used to blower pow that she had only brought her 110-mm underfoot skis to California. We skied up to the top of Sourdough Hill, which only took about 20 minutes, as the total vertical of the hill probably does not exceed 600 feet. That said, it was a nicer 600-foot ski than anything we had previously skied. The gradient of the slope is reasonably steep, and while everything was quite firm, it was not especially icy nor was it even close to breakable.

Transition on Richardson Lake.

It was so much fun (at least relative to the other skiing available) that we ended up doing four laps.

A suave Thomas near the summit of Sourdough Hill with the Crystal Range in the background.

That night, Sam cooked a communal dinner of Kao Soi, made possible by Thomas carrying six pounds of frozen chicken legs up to the hut that morning. While Sam was preparing the chicken, Kyle regaled us with tales of public defending: how to get out of a DUI, a client who threw a bag of his poop at the judge upon hearing his sentence, and whether “not engaging in commerce” is a reasonable legal defense.

After dinner, we played yet another game of Liar’s Dice and then followed it up with four rounds of Liar’s Dice. Jenna sand-bagged us into thinking that she didn’t know the rules and then shot the moon. And Sam characteristically won.

Day 3

There was some talk the previous night about an AM corn lap on Sourdough, but Gus and I were skeptical of the existence of corn and also had a long drive back to the Bay, so after eating some breakfast and cleaning ashes out of one of the stoves and packing our gear—including group trash, since we didn’t have much else in the way of group gear—we started a slow descent back to the car.

The best part of the descent was the skate across Miller Lake and then Lily Lake.

The combination of ice, breakable crust, a road driven down by a truck, and variable gradient made for a challenging return trip.

We made it back to the car at about 10:15, took skis off, put on a clean t-shirt, apologized to the local homeowner for parking too close to his house, and started the drive home.

Trip takeaways

• Bring pad
• Burrito first night from a restaurant is pretty great
• Bring your own hatchet. Know how to use an awl
• Liar’s Dice is a great hut game for 10–12 people
• I should bring an inflatable pillow next time
• I need to find a better way to carry a camera than the Peak Design clip, which puts the camera a little too much in harm’s way

Caltopo