Hut, Hut, Hooray! Ludlow Ski Adventure
Backcountry Ski Report of Lake Tahoe's Ludlow Hut
Nestled 10 miles from any road in Lake Tahoe is a small wood hut called Ludlow. The hut is one of the only ways to explore Desolation Wilderness, a national forest with impossible to get permits in the summer and a skiing paradise (without the skiers and chairlifts) in the winter.
Quick PSA: Interested in this? Reservations for this go up at 9am PT on Nov 15, 2023 and all the weekends get booked quickly. More here.
To reach Ludlow, there are two options: General Creek Trail or McKinley Rubicon Trail, both serving as out-and-back routes. Notably, there isn't a documented route I could find online that connects the trails. In my experience, the absence of such information usually indicates that attempting to link them is likely incredibly difficult and poses significant danger.
Our plan from the get go was McKinley Rubicon since it’s supposed to be prettier and lower avalanche risk. However, the first challenge we had to navigate was the lack of parking at the trailhead. After scouring the depths of the internet, I thought I found a couple spots within reasonable walking distance.
On the day of our trip, as we were en route, a friend driving separately informed us that parking at McKinley Rubicon was unavailable. In response, we quickly adjusted our plans and decided to park at Sugar Pine Point State Park—an easy 5 bucks a night—and do General Creek trail.
The trail starts on the 1960 Olympic cross-country ski path on a dugout path.
Very quickly the trail ends and you have to make trail. In around 3-4 miles, the trails starts hugging snow on cliffs over the creek. At parts, it’s already given out.
There are also parts where we had to go down a steep slope and, at those points, wearing skins—carpet material on the bottoms of skis to allow going uphill—feels akin to wearing high heels going downhill: it’s unwieldy and you’re a lot worse if you’re less experienced.
On one of the last sections, we crossed over avalanche debris. The best thing I can say is it was short.
We ended the day with a short skin up Lost Corner Mountain and then skied down to the hut.
The hut was covered in snow but very charming. The top floor was dedicated to sleeping (i.e was empty), and the bottom floor served as a kitchen equip with a wood-fired stove, a pot, picnic tables, ample wood, and a couch.
In the morning the next day, we did a short run up Sourdough Hill.
As we packed up the hut and got ready to head back to the trailhead, it started lightly snowing, proceeding to lightly rain since it was above freezing.
However, the most spicy part was our decision to return via McKinley Rubicon, despite needing to reach the other trailhead. If you recall from early, this was likely “incredibly difficult and posed significant danger” but we decided to send it.
At some point, we split into two parties. One party continued on the trail. The other party—my party—cut right and hoped to eventually hit McKinley Rubicon Trail. As we went up, I wondered how far up we’d go and if we’d cliff out (get stuck on top of a cliff). Luckily, we read the contour maps correctly and it all ended up quite easy.
By the time we got to the parking lot and drove to the other trailhead to pick up the rest of the folks, folks were very cold but still smiling.
Still interested? This is the GPX for the routes we did.
Great write up! My wife and I are planning on heading up to Ludlow this weekend. Did you have to skin out or could you ski out on rubicon trail?