Photo: Rachel Tjossem
I searched “huts” in the Wildsnow search bar and it didn’t take much scrolling or convincing for me to fill a morning with hut reports and tales of shacks and shelters. From Noah Howell’s jungle dancing French Ridge Hut story to Louie Dawson’s South American Hut-to-hut to Lou Dawson’s hut diversity ponderings featured in Couloir Magazine back in the 1980s.
My latest hut trip over the first week of February wasn’t like those at all. Except maybe for Lou’s reference to a 19-skier capacity hut in Colorado: “It’s fun. Sometimes. People get rowdy, stay up late, make noise. Sleep on a party night can be hard-won.” But it was fun, for sure.
The Polar Star Inn isn’t perched on a glaciated ridgeline in New Zealand or deep in the Andes. Even by Colorado hut standards its location is modest – a bushy little clearing in a densely wooded slope off the Northwest side of New York Mountain. The views down into the Eagle River Valley aren’t half bad, though, and the hut’s decks are oriented to make the most of sunset for your apres-ski viewing pleasure. We didn’t traipse through a single jungle nor rope up for any number of crevasse crossings. To the contrary, we casually toured in on a Thursday night after work for a three night stay in the backcountry palace just outside of Eagle near Sylvan Lake State Park.
The History
Polar Star is a private hut built in 1987 that’s booked along with the 37 other backcountry huts in Colorado’s 10th Mountain Hut system and connected by skin tracks to Harry Gates, Peter Estin, and Seipel Huts. Seipel is a snowball’s throw away. And if you’ve got a smaller group, Seipel sleeps six and has access to the same terrain and the sauna. It also tends to have more booking availability. Check out the origin story of these huts here.
Peter Van Dyke and Cameron Patterson exfoliating en route to Polar Star
The Approach
Polar Star can either be accessed the easier way – through Eagle and up near Sylvan Lake State Park, or through the Lake Creek Valley out of Edwards. Our parties chose the former. A moderately easy 5.7 mile, 2,341 ft vertical approach with a few critical turns that have been an issue for travelers in the past. “Download the Caltopo map” was the mostly ignored direction I gave the cavalcade of subsequent approach parties.
The Polar Star Inn
Nineteen beds scattered through six private bedrooms means filling Polar Star to the brim is common and somewhat necessary to keep the costs down if you’ve secured the whole hut via lottery. But isn’t cramming into a fireside nook with eighteen of your closest friends part of the point? Theoretically you could nab just a spot or two instead and meet a handful of new ski partners or other strangers who may or may not be excited to see you.
The hut itself is right up there with the best of them in the 10th Mountain Hut System. A perched deck lavishes skiers in views of Eagle’s rocky topography with ample room for basking. A big outdoor grill adds options for cooking. The main room hosts four long dining tables and an iron stove adequate for heating the entire building.
A generous kitchen is necessary for prepping meals for eighteen hovering skiers if you can navigate the puzzle of questionably contrived propane filled tubes and pilot lights. There are gadgets and skillets for just about any meal, though operating the wood-fired oven is part art, part science. I thankfully peeped at Julia Dubinia’s Food For Ski Touring Hut Tripping during my Wildsnow hut content binge, which provided some inspiration to keep the food critics at bay when I donned the chef’s hat. If there are two Polar Star food prep tips I could share with the next group, they’re 1) start cooking early, and 2) no, that huge pot of water won’t come to a full boil with that little flame no matter how long you wait.
There are three other features that set Polar Star Inn apart from other huts in the system. Flowing water from an outside spigot means there’s no need to melt snow. The bathrooms, while offensively stinky, are connected to the building on the back deck – no stumbling through the snow to an outhouse. Last, there’s a sauna outside that can comfortably accommodate eight. I can’t stand being hot, so I didn’t partake.
Skiing Around Polar Star
My imagination may have glorified my memories from skiing around Polar Star five or six years ago. All I could really recall when I listed Polar Star in my hut lottery form was deep, steep powder frothing through North facing trees, somehow unspoiled by past hut trippers. Our 2025 trip wasn’t exactly like that. Colorado was just finishing up a dry spell. The snowpack was at low tide and the sticks and trees hadn’t submerged yet.
Still, we managed handfuls of good, short laps through the north facing trees perched immediately east of Polar Star, each one about 500 vertical feet averaging 30 degrees. Nothing like the bottomless powder I found here in 2018, but still fun, especially for folks in our group newer to ski touring and/or thrilled about avy-safe terrain steps from the hut.
We explored further north on what I thought was a pretty thoughtful skintrack into what my touring partners cursed after struggling through. We ventured through a facial sandblasting toward the summit of New York Mountain before retreating to the trees after adequate facial exfoliation. But we got what we came for – a glimpse into New York Mountain’s Northeastern bowl full of fun lines for another day and a better snowpack.
So the Polar Star Inn isn’t a standout Colorado hut for the skiing diehards who are itching for big days above treeline, steep descents, and lots of untouched powder. But even those skiers have friends and loved ones looking for something more casual and hut-centric. A few laps before hot lunch and a sauna. Puzzles and board games in front of the fire. A relatively straightforward but meaningful approach. That’s Polar Star’s niche in the 10th Mountain Huts’ portfolio.
The 10th Mountain Hut Association hosts maps and [official] information about the Polar Star Inn and booking information. For folks interested in booking Polar Star, the obvious ideal timeframe is right after a big storm. But in reality, early-to-mid February is typically the sweet spot that strikes the balance between good coverage and fluffy snow yet to be solidified by spring’s warmth.
And while you’re packing, don’t forget to check out Sean Snyder’s Beyond the Basics: Packing for your 1st or 51st Hut Trip. The one piece of gear I wouldn’t be caught dead without? A fresh roll of Leukotape to ward off blisters on 38 sweaty feet.
Folks coming in from out of town can grab beta, gear, and rentals at Cripple Creek Backcountry in Avon or Carbondale, depending on which direction you’re coming in from.
Bergen Tjossem is a ski fanatic, conservation professional, and nature nerd based in Vail, Colorado. His life and career have centered around protecting the natural environment and public lands that raised him, but as Ed Abbey put it, “It is not enough to fight for the land; It is even more important to enjoy it.” So when he’s not working his day job, you’ll find Bergen ski touring before dawn, ice climbing in the dark, running trails until his legs fall off, skiing 13er’s with his friends, or making the world’s best pizza with his wife, Rachel. You can find him on Instagram.
