Frey Hut – Day 1

A day later than planned, our group made our way to Frey Hut (Refugio Emilio Frey) on Tuesday, Sept 2nd. The hut sits south west of the Cerro Catedral resort at an elevation of 1700m. It was recently featured in the Sept 2013 issue of Powder Magazine along with our guide Jorge. I’m sure Jorge loves his much deserved publicity but I’m not sure the hut needed any as it was already over capacity on our first night.

To get there, we used the lifts to get into the alpine and skinned up further to make a high alpine traverse (crampons on the feet and ice axe in hand) to a col where we had an enjoyable ski down to the bottom of a valley.

Part way down from the high point of our traverse

From the valley we worked our way up the skiers right side through some brush and trees to reach the hut. The surrounding terrain is stunning.

Frey Hut

We took a little time to rest, have a snack, and claim our beds. Then we geared back up to ski the Central Couloir. We skinned up a ways up an obvious ramp and switched to bootpacking when the slope angel increased.

Paul and Jorge bootpacking up the ramp

Charlie and Kade catching their breath

After hitting the top of the snow ramp, we scrambled around the back side of the rock spires towards the entrance of the couloir.

Scrambling

View into another valley

More scrambling

After we reached the top of the couloir we put our skis back on and edged out to peer into the chute. It was definitely approaching the limit of my ability. I’d never skied anything that steep or narrow, especially in the backcountry. The snow also turned out to be a little worse than expected. There was now a fairly heavy crust on the top of the new snow.

Looking over the edge, it never looks as steep on camera

I went first behind Jorge. He recognized that I was the weaker downhill skier of the four of us and he wanted to ensure I made it down in one piece. It was tough turning in the crust and with each turn quite a bit of heavy sluff followed me. I managed to make it down without any crashes but I was far from graceful and leaned back into the slope a few times to catch my balance. Despite the mixed snow conditions it was an enjoyable ski that definitely got the blood pumping.

By the time we all made it down to the flats, the light was fading quickly. I took a picture the next morning in better light that I’ve used here to show the route and our tracks.

Green = up, red = down

That evening the hut was packed with other skiers and climbers. We enjoyed hot food, beer, and wine. Paul tried to befriend the hut cat Emilio but he was having none of it.

Emilio