A-frame cabin on Pikes Peak gets a face lift
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- Created on Wednesday, 08 September 2010 16:23
- Written by Nathan
Photo by Dave Philipps, The Gazette
By DAVE PHILIPPS, THE GAZETTE
This Spartan cabin huddled just below treeline on Pikes Peak means many things to many people.
For climbing parties angling for a sunrise summit bid, it is a strategic starting point. For local athletes looking to build red blood cells, it is the perfect perch in the thin mountain air. For hikers not ready for the fierce moods of the peak, it is a storm shelter from July lightning, August hail and biting January winds.
And for the Pikes Peak Group of the Colorado Mountain Club, it is a labor of love.
Only love could explain why more than a dozen members volunteered on a recent Saturday to pack heavy loads of worn-out roofing shingles from the cabin at 11,900 feet down to the city below. It was the last leg of a project to give the A-frame, which is celebrating its 46th year, a needed face lift.
“I’m actually surprised it has lasted as long as it has,” said Greg Long, one of the organizers of the renovation, as he walked down Barr Trail from the summit of the peak, toward the cabin.
Check out a photo gallery from atop Pikes Peak!
It’s not that the A-frame is all that old, or too flimsy to bear the brunt of Pikes Peak's snows (it sits in avalanche terrain). It’s the abuse it suffers from the people it was designed to shelter.
Countless one-night encounters with campers have been rough. Campers carve their names in the walls and ceilings. They sometimes try to use pieces of the cabin for firewood. They often leave their trash.
“A few years ago, someone built a fire in the middle of the floor,” Long said. “It burned a hole in the floor and I’m surprised it didn’t burn the whole thing down.”
At that point, members of the club decided it was time to step in.
The A-frame was once the charge of the U.S. Forest Service. It was built in 1964, according to Walter Schmucker, who was caretaker of Barr Camp, a few miles down the trail, at the time.
“The Forest Service flew everything in by helicopter,” he said when reached by e-mail recently at his home in Ohio. “At the time it was not called the A-frame, it was called the Adirondack shelter.”
The name traces back to simple three-walled shelters set up along the cold and rainy trails of Adirondack State Park in New York in the 1920s. The easy-to-build shelters spread down the spine of the Appalachians during the decades that followed, but few were built on the relatively warm, dry slopes of the Colorado Rockies.
“We always assumed they built it to provide for a bit of shelter for hikers who got caught in the storms that suddenly appeared from across the top of the mountain,” Schmucker said.
To that end, the A-frame has served its duty well.
“I’ve spent several nights there,” said Uwe Sartori, a Mountain Club volunteer. “In the winter, it is a great place to stop and think about heading up or down.”
When snow covers the trail, you can usually count on having the one-room shelter to yourself. But other times, the cabin tends to host at least one group per weekend, and since there is no reservation system, it’s a good idea to be prepared to sleep outside.
Over the years the Forest Service has relied on sporadic volunteer work to maintain the shelter. In 1999, the agency turned stewardship over to the Mountain Club.
The cabin takes considerable effort to maintain, and the effort is compounded by working at almost 12,000 feet.
To replace the damaged roof and floor, the club arranged to have materials flown in by Army helicopter, but the volunteers still had to pack in tools, paint, overnight gear and a ladder.
On the most recent work day, trip leader Lisa Heckel told volunteers to bring an “old, large backpack” because they would be carrying out piles of used shingles.
The 14 volunteers scoured the dew-flecked alpine meadow around the A-frame, gathering shingles, scrap metal, lumber, empty whiskey bottles and other trail trash. They stuffed it all into their backpacks and shouldered their heavy loads.
About half of them had spent a night in the cabin at some point, the others just wanted to help out. As they see it, maintaining the A-frame offers as much protection to the mountain as it does to hikers. Collin Powers, one of the trip leaders, said the humble cabin plays a big role in preserving the delicate mountain tundra.
“A well-kept A-frame attracts people to stay there, like a well-maintained trail attracts hikers to stay on trail,” he said.
“Having an A-frame shelter serves to concentrate overnight use,” Powers said. “Hikers would otherwise spread out over the alpine tundra, selecting a different camping site each time.”
Staying at A-frame
The A-frame shelter lies about 9 miles and almost 5,000 feet up Barr Trail. It is a one-room, three-walled shelter with no heat or running water, but the view is fantastic. There is no reservation system. Cabin use is first-come, first-served.
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