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i went to the elfin lakes hut on an ACC trip for my first overnight trip. still waiting on the riding pics but here are some decent ones of the trip.

the 12km slog to the hut was sort of miserable as the freezing level rose and it was raining pretty much the whole skin in. skinning up the logging road on the first half of the trail in the rain:


at this point i was wondering if this trip was going to be a total bust. visibility was terrible and all the snow had turned to mash potatoes. the 2nd half of the skin track was a bit challenging with lots of sidehilling and downhill sections. with my heavier overnight pack i bailed a couple times on some of the longer downhills. i'm starting to figure it out though. seems like putting one foot ahead of the other tele-style is the way to go instead of my old strategy of lean back, straight line, and pray. need to trim my skins to expose more edge.

terrain right around the hut as we got in around noon. we did a quick lap of this stuff but it was wet and heavy as expected:




this hut was luxury backcountry living - propane heating, solar powered LED lights, outhouses with TP dispensers, coleman stoves with pots for boiling snow, wooden bunks upstairs. pretty much everything you could want except running water and a great first hut trip:


that night it snowed 15-20 and we woke up to bluebird. couldn't have worked out better. the hut at 8am with the sunrise in the background:


heading out on the skin track. lots of lines in this bowl that i wanted to do but the trip leader was keen on getting further out. at first i was a bit miffed at skipping all this great terrain but i couldn't complain about where he took us:


long skin track to little diamond head. me trailing all the skiers again...


views from the top of little diamond head:




our lines. this is the closest i've come to heli skiing:


same shot but from a bit further back:


and another one from the skin out:


definitely want to head back there and stay at that hut for a few days. tons of awesome terrain back there to explore.

Heck yeah!

Nice work!
How long was the skin up to Elfin approximately? And then how much further up to those lines on diamond head?
I've only been as far as Paul Ridge area, but the terrain out past the hut looks a lot more fun that I was aware of.

took us about 3 hours to get to elfin lakes including a 1/2 hour stop at red heather shelter. yeah, i had never been past paul ridge either, but i don't think i'll ever stop there again. the terrain past elfin lakes is SO much better, but it would be a very long day trip. i intend on doing a multi-day trip to that hut to explore in the near future.

it took us about 2.5 hrs to get to the top of diamond head from elfin. you skin up through a bowl to a saddle, then ride down a short 100m vert slope then ascend to diamond head. apparently we hit it just right - our trip leader said he'd gone up to the saddle 6 times with the intent of doing diamond head but always had to turn around due to poor vis.

Cool TR and nice first overnighter,those first few pics were pretty miserable looking,great that you awoke to bluebird pow!