High Altitude Adventures

VagaBond Ranch

As the idea of a New Years backcountry trip rolled around with my friends we realized that we were very late if we wanted to get a spot in the popular 10^th mountain hut systems.  So I started looking around for other backcountry huts and accommodations in Colorado and came across the VagaBond Ranch site.  This is a large piece of property that is located outside of Granby Colorado with multiple luxuries cabins on it.  These are much different than your typical 10^th mountain hut, as in the summer this ranch is run as what appears to be a high class mountain get away with a hot tub, swing pool, volleyball court, and even baseball field.  But for the winter the accommodations are spectacular and you really feel like you are staying in a high class Aspen house

We headed out on New Years Eve day with a crew of 11 people.  We were quite the motley crew as this was some peoples first backcountry hut trip and we were making the trek on a variety of splitboards, telli skis and even snowshoes.

The skin up to the property is not a bad one it is just under 4 miles with hardly any elevation gain.  To add to this ease it follows a snowmobile road until you reach the private property so the trail is very hard packed, and we did not come across a single snowmobile so you did not feel like you were going to get run over.

We stayed in the Cascade cabin, which has a great overlook of the property as well of much of the skiable terrain surrounding you.  From here we could see Cascade Peak, and Ruby Mountain which both look like they have great ski terrain.  Off of Cascade there is some good mellow open skiing and longer tree runs. Ruby looked like it had some great tree skiing as well as a open cirque that if the conditions were right would be awesome.

As we explored around we found that the snow pack was very unstable and there was an ice layer underneath all of the great powder.  This was the determining factor that kept us off of the open exposed terrain on Cascade where we had originally planed to play.  We also noticed that there was a big fat crown from an avalanche down one of the chutes.

Instead we spent the next few days touring up thought the trees east and north of the houses and found a few good gullies that would allow for some great low angle skiing and really good powder. Also we found some really good runs just behind the house as well as just east of it, these allowed some great easy access snow and would make for great night runs.

As for an overall experience of the VagaBond Ranch I thought that the accommodations were extremely nice and the approach was really mellow. As for the skiing it was also mellow it does not allow you the front door access that some of the 10^th mountain huts do.  Even when the snow is stable the higher peaks will make for a fairly long day.  But we still enjoyed ourselves thoroughly and I would recommend this for a mellower trip.

You can find the website for the Ranch in my links area and as always when playing in the backcountry use caution and knowledge.

Cheers!