The Commentators: Bradley Hut Trip

2.13.2009

Bradley Hut Trip

A couple weeks ago I made a trip into the Tahoe backcountry with friends from work Adam and Marc, Dustin, and our organizers Erin (Adam's sister) and her boyfriend Jeremiah. We snowshoed/skied into the Sierra Club's Bradley hut, which is nestled right up in an alpine bowl just north of Squaw. Having been warned to bring our own sleeping pads, lighting, and cooking equipment, it was a nice surprise to find the newly renovated fully outfitted with mattresses (for 15), solar powered lights (good for ~3 hrs at night), and a decked out kitchen and picnic tables inside. It reminded me a lot of the nicer Dartmouth DOC cabins, but then again most DOC cabins don't have a 2-story outhouse or a 2nd-floor entrance with shovel in case the snow reaches 10+ feet. Nor do DOC cabins have 9,000' peaks surrounding you less than a mile away on three sides. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your feeling towards ridiculous amounts of snow) we were able to use the normal entrance due to this year's dry winter, but the snow conditions were still pretty great above 7,000' in the area thanks to a few inches that fell earlier in the week.

We were up there for two nights, so we got to do some good exploring of the nearby peaks. Perhaps the best part was that someone had left a couple plastic sleds up there, so we built a pretty fantastic kicker on a nearby hill and launched ourselves off it for hours. I'm afraid the pictures and videos we have don't quite do justice to the distance and air I remember getting, but the time-lapse video below is a pretty good summary of this activity.

Here are some more pictures from the trip. There are more available at my Picasa page as well as photos and some sledding/skiing videos on Erin's Picasa page. We all had a great time in a truly beautiful winter playground. Trips like this make me happy that we live in California!