This Epic Hut-to-hut Hike Takes You Via A few of Colorado’s Most Spectacular Mountains

I used to be crouching within the shelter of a boulder, 12,000 ft up in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, as wind and rain whipped round me. Two fighter jets whizzed by, the roar of their engines slicing via the sound of thunder. Pellets of ice started to fall from the sky.

“As soon as the hail comes, it means it’s nearly over,” stated John Vipiana, one among my mountaineering companions, who was kneeling beside me. I wasn’t certain if he meant the storm, or our lives. I made a decision to not ask. 

The 2 of us had walked forward of the remainder of our group of 9 hikers and two guides, and have been now alone. I regarded up from below the hood of my rain jacket and made out the shapes of brightly coloured backpacks shifting down the hill towards us. John was proper—in a couple of minutes, the hail let up, and we have been reunited with everybody, laughing in disbelief at how wild the climate had turned within the first few miles of our multiday trek.

As we continued our descent, the sky turned a superb blue. Somebody requested the place we have been. Our lead information, Patrick Ormond, who had moved to the entrance of the pack, known as out over his shoulder: “Paradise Basin.”

Fascinated by the emerald lake we’d handed simply earlier than the storm, and looking on the area of wildflowers and the grove of spruce and fir bushes forward of us, I needed to agree.

The San Juans are youthful than many different ranges within the Rocky Mountain system—youthful being a relative time period once you’re talking a few distinction of 25 to 30 million years. Over millennia, continental plates collided, volcanoes erupted and collapsed on themselves, and calderas fashioned. This up-and-down movement created a backbone of steep, jagged mountains that run via southwestern Colorado.

The realm is now residence to lots of the state’s “fourteeners,” or mountains over 14,000 ft, in addition to deep, bowl-shaped valleys carved by historic glaciers. The mixture of excessive peaks and scooped-out ravines makes the San Juans a hardcore backcountry ski vacation spot and, in summer time, a chic place to hike. 

An avid backpacker, I wished to expertise a aspect of Colorado that few vacationers do. So final August, I flew to Ouray—a typical launching level for adventures within the area—to embark on a 35-mile hut-to-hut traverse run by San Juan Mountain Guides, a neighborhood tour operator that has been organizing mountaineering, snowboarding, and climbing journeys since 1986.

Within the Alps, you may trek all day with a lightweight pack, arrive at a cushty chalet, sit right down to a home-cooked meal, sleep in an actual mattress, then get up and do all of it once more. This sort of hut-to-hut mountaineering is uncommon in the USA, however over the previous decade, a handful of European-style trendy huts have opened within the San Juans.

Two years in the past, Nate Disser, the proprietor of San Juan Mountain Guides, and Patrick, who’s the corporate’s head information, obtained the thought to hyperlink up three huts to create an epic, five-day guided hike. They determined to call it the Million Greenback Trek, a reference to the cinematic—and barely terrifying— Million Greenback Freeway, which winds 25 miles via the mountains between Ouray and Silverton. Some say the highway is called for the staggering views, whereas others declare it’s as a result of it reportedly took $1 million to construct every mile.

After the hail, we continued strolling via intermittent rain. Our motley crew was a mixture of skilled adventurers and common of us trying to find an energetic trip.

John and his spouse, Ann Fitzmaurice, who stay in Oregon, have been easygoing and gregarious—and in addition intimidatingly match. They have been touring with their pal Dave Gooder, a lawyer from Virginia. Three middle-aged brothers, Jim, Mike, and Ed Styslinger, had come from Texas. Kelley Johnson and her 10-year-old son, Chase, hailed from Boulder, Colorado. Chase impressed us all together with his stamina, good spirits, and ease round grown-ups. I got here in with stable trekking expertise and a few half marathons below my belt.

Our two guides, nevertheless, have been on a completely completely different stage. Along with his handlebar mustache and lengthy ponytail, Patrick had the rangy, tanned look of somebody who spends lots of time within the mountains. A nationwide collegiate rowing champion, he has led expeditions to Argentina’s Mount Aconcagua, the very best mountain exterior of Asia.

Steven Van Sickle—equally sturdy, and all the time in a close-fitting beanie—has guided mountaineering and ski journeys to a number of the most legendary peaks in China and India. Each have additionally summited Mount McKinley (also referred to as Denali), in Alaska, and are licensed by the Worldwide Federation of Mountain Guides Associations, the world’s most revered guiding group. 

Early within the afternoon, we reached a welcome sight: a wood-and-stone construction with smoke curling from the chimney. Stepping inside the heat of the Opus Hut, I exhaled deeply. Opus sits at 11,600 ft, on an outdated mining declare, and has creature comforts a miner might solely have dreamed of: working water and electrical energy, in fact, in addition to meals like mushroom-barley soup with olive-oil croutons or coconut rooster curry, plus beer, wine, and cocktails.

After devouring a charcuterie plate, I hightailed it for the cedar sauna, which was set on the sting of a hill. Because the steam hissed and swirled, I leaned again on the wood bench and watched the afternoon mild shift, my ideas drifting just like the clouds.

Over the following few days, our group fell right into a routine as we made our approach from one hut to the following. Fueled by hearty breakfasts—egg polenta bites at one cease, chocolate-chip pancakes at one other—we might set off early to deal with between six and 9 miles, gaining as a lot as 3,000 ft of elevation. At nearly each flip, it appeared, we came across one thing astonishing. Some sights have been giant—a herd of 30 elk thundering down a slope; a turquoise lake the place white-tailed ptarmigans flew overhead. Others have been small, like a fraction of elk backbone, picked clear by an unknown scavenger, or clusters of spectacular flowers, together with columbine, paintbrush, and larkspur.

We sometimes handed different hikers, together with, on a very aggressive climb, a person in Wranglers and a cowboy hat, who was not out of breath within the slightest, casually strolling together with his Australian cattle canine. In the future, we crossed the saddle of Imogene Cross—at 13,114 ft the very best within the San Juans. Alongside the best way, Patrick or Steven would toss out bits of historical past and information in regards to the wildlife.

Largely, we simply soaked all of it in, and at every evening’s hut, we’d collect across the hearth and swap tales. A number of of us realized we had stayed at Ouray’s Western Resort & Spa—a lately restored boardinghouse from 1891 with a terrific bar and restaurant—the evening earlier than our journey and could be returning there after the trek.

After Opus, we spent two nights at Crimson Mountain Alpine Lodge, which allowed a few of us to do an extended day hike and others to relaxation. In distinction to the   cloistered design at Opus, Crimson Mountain had a up to date really feel, with an A-frame construction, a big, open-plan residing space, floor-to-ceiling home windows, and a communal eating desk. There have been personal rooms downstairs, whereas upstairs, a lofted sleeping house had particular person beds with privateness curtains.

At evening, I performed Monopoly or Jenga with Kelley and Chase, who gained each time. Ann and John would get away their cribbage set. Somebody would choose up a guitar. Beers could be cracked, playing cards shuffled. By 9 o’clock, the fireplace would burn low, and everybody would peel off to mattress. I winced with the hassle of getting again up on my ft, however was exhilarated by what lay forward the following day.

By the point we reached Mount Hayden Backcountry Lodge, our ultimate vacation spot, we felt like one large, pleased household, albeit an exhausted one. I’d exchanged numbers with Ann and John, promising I’d attain out if I used to be ever in Oregon, and talked to Kelley about bringing a few of my associates to her household’s resort in Belize. Dave supplied to ship me recommendations for hikes in Europe I would like. 

On our final morning, we stated our goodbyes to Kelley and Chase, who have been heading residence early for the college week. The athletic effort was beginning to add up, and I used to be grateful that the ultimate, five-mile trek to Crystal Lake (the place a van would then shuttle us again to Ouray) was largely downhill.

About an hour into the hike, we rested for a couple of minutes on the aspect of the path. Steven pointed behind us to Mount Sneffels, a fourteener named after Snæfellsjökull, the glacier-topped volcano in Iceland the place the characters in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Heart of the Earth start their descent into the subterranean world. 

I stared on the huge type of Sneffels. The summit was barely obscured by clouds, however its slopes revealed streaks of clover-green grass. Then, in a second none of us might have scripted, the arc of a rainbow materialized. Standing there, 12,000 ft up, I felt as if over the previous 5 days we’d entered some alternate world, one the place strangers launched into a bodily feat that examined us fully—and got here out the opposite aspect as associates. 

4-night journeys with San Juan Mountain Guides from $2,299.

A model of this story first appeared within the July 2025 challenge of Journey + Leisure below the headline “A Stroll within the Clouds.”