Hut Systems in the US—Α Ηαlting History of Hut Systems in USA

By Sam Demas and Laurel Bradley, Fall 2020

Huts have never played a major role in sheltering backcountry travelers in the US. Yet since the 1980s, more huts have been developed and built as Americans embrace and adapt these shelter systems, which encourage and facilitate access to wild places by diverse user groups.  The slow, on again/off again history of hut development may reflect an American ambivalence about how to view and support overnighting in the backcountry. 

Until the maturation of car camping in the 1920s & 30s and the backpacking revolution of the 1970s, spending the night in the US backcountry involved either very rugged camping excursions or guided hunting and fishing expeditions, usually supported by horses. After two successful efforts (in 1888 and 1916) to bring the European full-service hut model to America, hut development halted for nearly two generations. The story of US hut systems was revived in the 1980s with western ski huts. New experiments continue into the twenty-first century.

DATE	SYSTEM	STATE
1888	Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) Huts*	NH
1913	Glacier National Park chalets (most no longer exist)	MT
1916	Yosemite High Sierra Camps*	CA
1937	Haleakala National Park	HI
1938	Sierra Club Donner Pass area huts	CA
1945	Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park cabins*	MI
1953	Alfred A. Braun Hut System	CO
1964	Eklutna Traverse	AK
1964	Delta Range mountaineering huts	AK
1968	Pinnell Mountain National Recreational Trail	AK
1971	Bomber Traverse	AK
1973	Resurrection Pass Trail*	AK
1981	Rendezvous Huts*	WA
1982	Sun Valley Mountain Huts*	ID
1982	Tenth Mountain Division Hut Association*	CO
1983	Idaho State University Portneuf Range Yurt System	ID
1984	Boundary Country Trekking*	MN
1985	Nancy Lake State Recreation Area	AK
1985	White Mountains National Recreation Area	AK
1986	Never Summer Nordic*	CO
1987	San Juan Huts*	CO
1987	Southwest Nordic Center*	CO
1987	Summit Huts	CO
1989	Bear River Outdoor Recreation Alliance	WY
1990	Mount Tahoma Trails Association*	WA
1992	Hinsdale Haute Route	CO
2003	AMC Maine Wilderness Lodges	ME
2007	Cascade Huts (no longer operational)	OR
2007	Maine Huts and Trails*	ME
2008	Stehekin Outfitters	WA
2011	San Juan Haute Route	CO
2012	Alaska Huts Association	AK
2014	Three Sisters Backcountry*	OR
2018	American Prairie Reserve*	MT
2020	Adirondack Hamlets to Huts*	NY
2020	Vermont Huts Association	VT

There is no doubt that the extensive European hut system influenced the development of huts in the US. However, our vast countryside, patterns of land ownership, economic norms, and attitudes toward nature and personal freedom have all affected how US hut systems are developed, where they exist, and how they operate.

The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), established in 1876 in Boston and explicitly patterned on European alpine clubs, built the very first hut system in this country. Instead of the Alps, members gravitated to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Madison Spring Hut, the AMC’s first, completed in 1888, was built as a safe and convenient base for both hikers and climbers. Other huts, some planned as emergency shelters in response to accidents, followed. By the late 1930s, seven of the current eight huts were in place, offering comfortable accommodations along the rugged trail through the Presidential Range. The AMC hut system was the first and last to be built by a US conservation organization until the American Prairie Reserve huts opened in 2018.

Various other organizations promoted hiking and skiing in early twentieth-century America and helped, directly or indirectly, create backcountry lodging opportunities. Among conservation and outdoor recreation organizations established around 1900 were the Sierra Club (1892), the Mazamas (1894), and The Mountaineers (1906); the Adirondack Mountain Club was founded in 1922. None of their lodgings, though, were built to support hut-to-hut. The traverse just wasn’t an American thing.

Two trail-related shelter systems did flourish in the early twentieth century. The Green Mountain Club of Vermont, established in 1910, promoted the vision of a long-distance trail, punctuated with shelters, traversing the entire north–south axis of the state. This project inspired the even more ambitious Appalachian Trail (AT).

In 1921, Benton MacKaye published “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning,” proposing that a trail with a network of shelter camps, “with proper facilities and protection, could be made to serve as the breath of a real life for the toilers in the bee-hive cities along the Atlantic seaboard and elsewhere.” His vision was of a series of communities along the trail designed to support social transformation.  His idea of shelter camps, providing both comfortable accommodations and educational and nature immersion opportunities, was ultimately deemed impractical; instead, three-sided rustic shelters were positioned every 8 to 12 miles along the trail.  Today overnights on the AT are supported by camp sites, more than 250 backpacking shelters, and 8 AMC huts in the White Mountains.

The AT offers day hikers and section hikers opportunities to commune with nature and, for the really adventurous, the grand structure of a rugged, long pilgrimage. But without the comfort and convenience of huts, the AT is not accessible to the full spectrum of Americans envisioned by MacKaye. Subsequent US long-distance trails, such as the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, and the North Country Trail, were designed for backpackers and have not, for the most part, included shelters or huts.

While Europe gave rise to alpine clubs and built a system of recreational mountain huts, America was leading the world in preserving wild natural lands. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, conservationists articulated the positive value of wilderness for humanity. They lobbied for protecting wildlands, some pristine and some already spoiled by logging and mining. Clubs, including the AMC and the Sierra Club, joined the campaign to save wildlands and to prevent further devastation through uncontrolled resource extraction. The National Park System grew out of these efforts. Early conservationists, including John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt, foregrounded the concept of “wilderness,” that is, areas of the earth untouched by man. The distinctive American celebration of wilderness has dramatically shaped the international conservation discourse and US values related to the outdoors—and it has conditioned attitudes about manmade structures in the backcountry.

In 1916, the National Park Service established the Yosemite High Sierra Camps, the second US hut system, to promote use of the park and access to the sublime high country. The High Sierra Camps (initially three, now five) were based on the Sierra Club tradition of an annual high trip. Members, invited to spend a month each summer in Yosemite’s high meadows, were treated to comfortable overnight lodgings and hot meals in tent encampments, with supplies hauled up by mule train. Today, Yosemite is the only US national park with a fully operational hut system.

Two other national parks—Montana’s Glacier and Haleakala in Hawaii—also created backcountry lodging early in the twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1915, the Great Northern Railway set up nine chalet encampments, spaced a day’s horseback ride apart, in Glacier National Park to offer comfortable overnight accommodations to visitors traveling by horse. These chalets flourished until the Great Depression. After World War II, with the private automobile having replaced the train for most long-distance travel and with roads penetrating the park’s interior, all but two of the chalets were decommissioned. The two still in operation—Sperry and Granite Park Chalets—attracted hikers beginning in the 1950s; the chalets are now so popular that reservations are awarded via a lottery. Sperry Chalet dormitory was destroyed by fire in 2017 and has been rebuilt.

In 1916 in Hawaii, long before statehood, Haleakala Crater was designated part of Hawaii National Park. In the mid-1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps embarked on extensive trail-building projects and constructed three backcountry cabins, which may be linked on a multiday journey.

In Michigan, an extensive backcountry cabin system in the Porcupine Mountains showed that hut-to-hut travel could take root on state as well as federal lands. In 1945, what is now called Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park was established to conserve the largest stand of old-growth northern hardwood forest in the Upper Midwest. Twelve backcountry cabins offered rustic shelter to hikers and skiers seeking either single-destination getaways or hut-to-hut opportunities. The Porkies, arguably the most expansive network of its day, remains one of the oldest and largest hut systems.

Yosemite National Park almost became home to a hut-to-hut ski system. In the 1930s, Yosemite developed a ski resort at Badger Pass and drew up plans for at least two backcountry huts to shelter ski touring enthusiasts overnight. Only Ostrander Ski Hut, which opened in 1941, was built. Initially run by a National Park Service concessionaire, it is now managed by a private foundation.

Skiing was gaining momentum in America across the 1920s and 1930s. While
downhill skiing ultimately came to dominate, ski touring drew an enthusiastic following. Here and there, in the 1930s and early 1940s, infrastructure was created to shelter backcountry skiers—for example, ski school cabins associated with the Sun Valley Resort in Idaho and the first of several Sierra Club huts near Donner Pass in California.

Publications affiliated with the National Ski Association of America advocated for better ski mountaineering skills and for European-style huts in the US. In the 1942 American Ski Annual, James Laughlin’s “A Plea for Huts in America” called out to the association to get involved in setting up a chain of huts, enabling “the cream of skiing,” that is, multiday ski tours. Also in 1942, David Brower, who later became the executive director of the Sierra Club (1952–69), compiled the Manual of Ski Mountaineering in collaboration with other Sierra Club ski mountaineers from the San Francisco Bay region at the request of the association. The slim book proved useful as a training manual for the Tenth Mountain Division, the Colorado-based World War II army division (which included Brower) that specialized in mountain warfare and is now memorialized in the largest US hut system!

The Alfred A. Braun Huts were the third US system and the nation’s first ski hut system. In 1953, under the auspices of the National Ski Association, Aspen-based ski enthusiasts rebuilt an old miners’ cabin for overnights in the backcountry and called it Tagert Hut. Additional huts were added in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1967, Alfred A. Braun was designated manager of the system and oversaw the construction of three additional huts, bringing the total to seven. This hut system, now managed by a nonprofit, is named for the charismatic and opinionated Braun. The huts, for winter use only, cater to expert skiers trained to navigate in avalanche-prone terrain mostly above tree line. The Braun huts are simple, low-amenity structures situated on government land—in this case, US Forest Service (USFS) holdings. The small size, reminiscent of mountaineering bivvies, is best suited to a single party.

Alpine clubs organized shelter systems for mountaineers in Alaska. Beginning in the 1960s, not long after the Braun huts were established for expert backcountry skiers in Colorado, the Mountaineering Club of Alaska (MCA) and the Alaska Alpine Club (AAC) got to work. Over successive decades, the AAC built three huts in the glacier-rich Delta Range, not far from Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The MCA also put together a trio of huts across the Eklutna Traverse northeast of Anchorage in the Chugach Mountains. This organization also orchestrated a chain of huts across the Bomber Traverse in the Talkeetna Mountains between 1971 and 2018, one of which is operated by the American Alpine Club. All these club huts are aimed at expert hikers and skiers primed to cross glaciers and navigate rough, unmarked terrain.

With the construction of an extensive Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and 1960s, car camping became the American way to experience nature. Campsites on county, state, federal, and private lands, with picnic tables, fire rings, and toilet facilities, provided modest comforts and safety for families seeking inexpensive overnights in the great American outdoors. In the 1970s, the backpacking boom emerged as a complement and corrective to car camping. Backpacking, fueled by the environmental movement, youth culture, and innovations in lightweight and waterproof gear, offered young people and wilderness seekers opportunities to journey far from roads and crowded campgrounds. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, increasing numbers aspired to take multiday journeys in wild natural areas. The backpacker’s ethos is straight out of the American rugged individualism playbook, celebrating solitude in nature, making do with little, and stoic survival rather than comfort. Huts, with associations of comfort and conviviality, were alien to the hard-core backpacker mindset. Even so, huts figured in conversations about how to best accommodate new waves of walkers and nature enthusiasts in the backcountry.

William E. Reifsnyder, a Yale professor and member of the AMC’s hut committee, had extensive experience with European huts. He advised the American Youth Hostel Association to consider huts in relation to hostel development in the US. And in the late 1970s, he wrote High Mountain Huts: A Planning Guide for the Colorado Mountain Trails Foundation in cooperation with the USFS (see Resources). In this substantial pamphlet, Reifsnyder presented detailed guidelines for a hypothetical hut and trail system in the mountain West, catering to both walkers and skiers. His closing sentence, “Huts are an idea whose time has come,” was prescient.

During the 1980s, ten new hut systems—all catering to Nordic skiers—came into being in the American West. These systems define a distinctly American approach to huts. New operations in Colorado, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Minnesota were each locally driven by small private businesses, nonprofits, and one university outdoor program; the huts—all self-service—are situated on public land. Even though a hut operation may claim to be a backcountry adventure without the weight, clients must carry their own food in almost all cases.

All these hut-to-hut ski systems take advantage of public lands through special use permits. Technically they are all concessionaires and pay a percentage of revenue to their government “landlords.” Eight are on USFS land and two are on state parks property. Every new hut system targeting USFS land, whether a for-profit or a nonprofit initiative, must negotiate with the district office and go through mandated assessment and review. In most of these early cases, permits were initially granted for seasonal structures only. Huts, built to be removed in the late spring and reassembled in the fall, tended to be small and relatively portable. Yurts proved a popular solution to this design challenge.

Fishook Yurt, now part of Sun Valley Mountain Huts, originally built by Kirk Bachman for Joe Leonard, of Leonard Expeditions, is likely the first ski yurt in USA. Rodney Ley started Never Summer Nordic in 1986 with three yurts, including one built by Bachman.

 As USFS district officials developed confidence in individual concessionaires over time, permission to leave the huts up year-round was usually granted. In a unique partnership, the USFS (along with the Colorado Historical Society) operates two historic railroad structures—Ken’s Cabin and the Section House—as an interpretive center in summer and through a special use permit allows Summit Huts to welcome backcountry skiers in winter. The two systems on state lands, Never Summer Nordic in Colorado and the Mount Tahoma Trails Association in Washington, must also periodically renegotiate their permits.

The Mount Tahoma Trails Association and Colorado’s Tenth Mountain Division Hut Association and Summit Huts were created by local outdoor enthusiasts committed to creating systems to support their own recreational pursuits, and also to invite others to enjoy the same pleasures. They are run by nonprofits with a relatively narrow focus, in contrast to the much broader missions of the AMC and the Sierra Club, who established some of America’s very first backcountry huts. The exemplary Tenth Mountain Division Hut Association is notable for its scale, the design and structural integrity of its huts, and professionalism in management and operations. This is due in part to the standards of its founders, its premier ski country location, and the deep pockets of its patrons.

Private business drove the creation of most new hut systems in the 1980s. From Washington to Idaho, Colorado to Minnesota, energetic individuals and couples saw opportunity in the Nordic skiing boom. The Rendezvous Huts may have been the first of this wave of huts to open. Huts were a vehicle for making a living and pursuing a labor of love. These small enterprises developed organically over time, sometimes in conjunction with related enterprises. The Boundary Country Trekking folks were also in the guiding, dogsledding, and lodging business; huts were an outgrowth of Sun Valley Trekking guiding activities. As local entrepreneurs, hut system owners could get things done without fuss and react to emerging trends. The Southwest Nordic Center founder, after observing the Never Summer Nordic yurts, collaborated with a carpenter friend to design and build the system’s yurts. In 1987, San Juan Huts developed a ski—and then hike—hut system, and later responded to new recreational trends with the nation’s first hut-to-hut routes exclusively for mountain bikers.

Ten hut systems have emerged so far in the twenty-first century. In addition, most of the nation’s hut systems have expanded operations, embracing more travel modes and seasons; on top of hiking, skiing, and biking, a few have also added paddling options.

In 2003, the AMC embarked on a multipronged Maine Woods Initiative in the 100-Mile Wilderness near Mount Katahdin. The AMC purchased 70,000 acres and established 120 miles of trails in service to land conservation. Lodges and cabins included in the purchase draw people to the reserve; programs support hiking and lodge-to-lodge recreational skiing as low-impact ways of enjoying the Maine woods.

Four years after the launch of that initiative, a new nonprofit inaugurated an ambitious huts and trails system in another economically depressed region of the state. Maine Huts and Trails built four high-end huts, and a trail system, to welcome hikers, bikers, and skiers. Despite energetic programming, the full-service offerings proved unsustainable; in 2019, Maine Huts and Trails shifted to a self-service model with greater reliance on volunteer staff.

In Oregon, local entrepreneurs created a couple of new hut systems near well-
established downhill ski areas. Cascade Huts opened in 2007 in the shadow of Mount Hood with three small plywood cabins. Unfortunately, this operation has gone dormant since 2018. Farther south, not far from Mount Bachelor, Three Sisters Backcountry offers a two-night Nordic traverse. This family business, opened in 2014, operates on an enhanced self-service model, with a fully stocked pantry of ingredients ready to inspire visitors to cook tasty meals. They modeled this practice on the San Juan Hut Systems bike huts in Colorado.

In 2018, American Prairie Reserve, a private landscape-scale project in Montana, opened the first of three huts in a projected ten-hut system. The organization aims to become the largest nature reserve in the continental US. This is the second US hut system not located in the mountains (the other is in Minnesota). Hut manager Mike Kautz, a veteran of the AMC’s White Mountains hut system, introduced huts as a means to welcome visitors to the area.

The Vermont Huts Association inaugurated a four-hut traverse in 2020, linking existing huts to support skiing from Camels Hump to the Bolton Valley. This organization coordinates eight dispersed huts throughout the state, and aims to create an extensive network of backcountry accommodations as a means of stitching together Vermont’s myriad trail systems.

Adirondack Hamlets to Huts (AHH) also opened in 2020, using the hut-to-hut idea to organize nature-based travel in Adirondack Park, encompassing six million acres of wildlands and 102 towns and villages. This nonprofit orchestrates routes combining hiking and paddling, or other travel modes, with overnights in existing hostelries. Hut-to-hut, in this case, is close to the European experience of village-to-village travel. To drive economic development, and to serve recreational and conservation goals, AHH has identified, analyzed, and prioritized twenty-six routes in the region. New huts may be constructed in the future to fill in gaps between existing accommodations.

In 2021 The Aquarius Trail opened in SW Utah, providing a hut-to-hut gravel bike route modeled on the very successful San Juan Huts bike routes in Colorado.

Until very recently there was really no coherent approach to or understanding of huts and their role in the American outdoor recreation spectrum. Americans knew very little about huts.  Most hut operators didn’t know each other and most had only a sketchy understanding of what other systems existed and how they operate.  But this has changed as a critical mass of hut systems has been developed, and particularly as the US Hut Alliance was formed in 2021 to bring together the nation’s hut community. Americans are now beginning to embrace huts as outdoor recreation infrastructure, and hut operators are learning from each other. The halting history of huts in the USA points to a period of creativity and greater continuity of effort in the years ahead.

****

This brief history sets the stage for our overview of U.S. huts today “Hut Systems in the USA: situation and outlook 2020, and for my Vision for huts in the future.

You can supplement our history of huts in USA with a well-researched piece by Tom Hallberg on the history of US backcountry ski huts published in issue 144 of Backcountry Magazine February 2022, p. 80-97.