Will Walk for Food

When we weren't skiing, we were exploring the mountain life. We discovered some great new restaurants, including here and also a place called Frites. All the meals were good, but none was harder earned than the meal we had at this setup.

We arrived at the base of the mountain near Leadville shortly before dusk. The idea of this dinner is to hike, snowshoe, cross country ski or snowmobile 1 mile up into the woods until you arrive at an isolated hut (or a yurt if you're being technical) for dinner. The hut has no electricity or indoor restroom facilities so it's roughing it for city folks.

By the time we had hiked halfway up the trail, it was getting dark. It reminded me of the scenes in the The Shining where he's chasing the kid around in the night surrounded by snowbanks and hundreds of pine trees. I was out of breath 10 minutes into the 35 minute hike and was worried about bears until Eli gently reminded me that they are hibernating for the winter.

Eli was leading the pack in the dark

We took this picture while we were waiting for the snowshoeing crowd to catch up.

Joy and Amy were making sure no one jumped us from behind. Or they might have been pushing me up the trail because I was ready to pass out from oxygen deprivation.

Finally we arrived at the yurt! It's that brown colored hut in the background without electricity.

Once inside, we enjoyed a great four course dinner of soup, salad, salmon/chicken/elk and dessert before they sent us walking back down the mountain in the dark.

Luckily, they provided these fashionable headlamps to light the path back to the base of the mountain.

Back to civilization, enjoying our drinks on the patio at the condo.