Peter Grubb Hut

The Basics

History

The Clair Tappan Lodge offers a more detailed history on the Peter Grubb Hut than I’ll recount here. However, this is one of the oldest huts in this region and was built in 1938 in honor of Peter Grubb — who passed away while traveling in Europe at 18 — by his family. It has served as a refuge for backcountry skiers and summer hikers ever since.

Getting a Reservation

Clair Tappan Lodge manages the reservation system for the Peter Grubb Hut (along with most of the other huts in the region), with reservations opening for booking in November. I suggest subscribing to the Clair Tappan Lodge mailing list to get a heads up on when reservations will open and on volunteer opportunities.

Ahead of the public, those who volunteer for summer maintenance of the hut get first-dibs on booking. This means that most, if not all, weekends are booked before public booking opens — so either prepare for a mid-week booking, or arrange to volunteer if you’re keen on a weekend reservation. In general I’d recommend targeting typical mid-winter dates like late-January through February for the best touring conditions — but of course you’ll have to take a gamble on what kind of winter will be in progress.

You can book out the entire hut at a flat rate, or when not reserved by a single group, you can book individual slots. It's about $50 per night depending on size of group, rate, etc.

Preparing For The Hut

The hut sleeps 15, and keep in mind that 15 people sleeping in a single room creates a cacophony of wrinkling air mattresses, rubbing sleeping bags, and snoring. It’s loud as hell and earplugs are a good idea. Prepare to bring all of your own sleeping gear such as sleeping pad, sleeping bag, pillow, etc. The wood stove keeps the hut fairly warm, so there's no need for deep winter gear, but prepare to sleep in 40º-ish temps. There is no sleeping gear provided at the hut — everyone sleeps on the floor of the upper level — and there are no bunks whatsoever.

The hut has no hut-keeper and you are expected to be mostly self-sufficient. For heat, there is a wood stove you can keep going with the ample provided firewood (although you will need to do some log-splitting yourself). For cooking, there is a Coleman stove and some butane cans (at least there was for us) as well as some well-worn pots and pans. Those are useful for making larger meals and melting snow over the wood stove for water.

I would recommend bringing your own light-weight camping stove, fuel, pots/mugs, and silverware as there’s no real guarantee for what will be there and one Coleman stove isn’t practical for 15 people cooking their own meals. Further, while you can melt snow over the woodstove and boil it for safety, you’re going to end up with lots of pine needles, bark, and dirt. I would recommend bringing a water filter to pump clean, filtered water. In addition to the cooking area, the communal area has two long tables with plenty of space for 15 people to gather. Our group had a grand time doing a group fondu meal, playing guitar, and otherwise just hanging out.

Beyond these basics, bring everything you’ll need for ski-touring or whatever winter activity you are keen to get up to. There’s incredible ski touring from the hut and I would recommend booking two nights so that you have a full day in the middle to explore.

Skiing at the Peter Grubb Hut

Getting There

The hike to the hut is a straight-forward 3-mile approach. You start by parking at the SNO-park near Boreal Mountain Resort. You’ll need a permit so get one online ahead of time. Then, follow the Castle Valley trail up to Castle Pass — the saddle between Castle Peak and Andesite Peak.

I would budget 3 hours for this approach assuming you’re in decent backcountry shape. We started around 11:00 AM and got to the hut around 2:00 PM.

There’s ample backcountry ski terrain you can access from Peter Grubb. Our group explored the south face of Basin Peak, as well as the east-facing slopes from the ridge that connects Basin Peak to Castle Peak. We were navigating low snow levels which left a lot of the upper-regions of Round Valley bare, however I imagine in higher snow years that the whole of Round Valley would make for great ski terrain.

Basin Peak

As a sunset lap on our first day, we went across the meadow at the bottom of Round Valley and up the south face of Basin Peak. At the very top, we had some bushwhacking and rock navigation to do, but we made it to the peak, enjoyed the incredible view of Castle Peak, the whole Tahoe region, and even Mount Lassen far in the distance.

The snow had baked all day and so our run back down to the cabin was soft and fun with spring-like corn conditions (albeit in January). We were able to follow our nose all the way down to the meadow and avoid transitioning all the way back to the hut. All told this lap got us about 1,000 feet of skiing in a few hours.

Castle Peak Back Bowls

For our full-day tour, we struck out up the north-west face of Round Valley headed to the ridge-line north of Castle Peak. The skiing down this face seemed very promising, but we were looking for a longer adventure so we kept on to the ridge. The last 100 feet or so at the top of the ridge was devoid of snow, but we took the gamble that there’d be snow at the top, so we hiked the skis for the final bit.

Even though it hadn’t snowed in Tahoe for about a month, we found soft wind-blown snow at the top of the ridge, boding well for conditions on the east-face down from the ridge.

We lapped 1000 feet of skiing down the east-face from the Round Valley ridge twice, getting two incredible powder runs in. At the bottom following our second run we took a Charcuter-ski break for lunch and considered what to do next.

We decided to head back up to the ridge and then traverse north to Basin Peak. Part of our group split off to take a more… direct route… up a steep face of the ridge. Most of us however opted to head up the more modest north-east facing slope and then take a longer traverse along the ridge.

Our group re-united successfully at the top of the ridge, and we all struck out for Basin Peak which is easy to access heading north along the ridge line with only a bit of elevation gain at the final tail.

From the peak, a few of us decided to do one more lap down the north-east face of Basin Peak as the snow seemed like it was accumulating in powder there as well. Once again we weren’t disappointed as we clocked another 800 feet or so of excellent skiing.

Then, with the sun starting to dip lower on the horizon and the snow on Basin Peak’s south-east facing starting to firm up, we made quick time back up to the ridge just south of Basin Peak and found a single strip of snow we could descend down from the ridge between rocks and Lodgepole Pines. From here, we had a wonderful final run on slushy but quickly firming snow back to the hut.

Over Andesite and Back Home

After a taking a snack break at the peak and enjoying the un-obstructed views of Castle Peak, we skied down south-east from the peak, eventually joining back up wit the trail, but skipping the vast majority of the bobsled track. The ski down from Andesite was lovely tree-skiing although we took things slow with our full packs.

Once back on the trail, it was a quick final mile or so downhill back to the car and then off to Truckee for some well-deserved beer.