The San Juan Hut System (see official web-site) is a series of well-stocked cabins operated by a small company out of Ridgway, Colorado and catering primarily to mountain bikers.  The cabins are positioned every 20 or 30 miles along rugged forest service roads through the Uncompahgre and Manti-La Sal National Forests of western Colorado and eastern Utah, stretching from Telluride to Moab.  The full journey from Telluride to Moab takes seven days and six nights, although an abbreviated trip of five days and four nights (such as the one we took) is possible if you stop at Gateway, Colorado just prior to crossing the Utah border.  Each day's journey from hut to hut takes approximately 4 hours for intermediate riders with good endurance, barring any equipment failures, bad road conditions, etc.

Bikers typically travel light, carrying only a change of clothing, emergency first aid and bike repair supplies, and hydration packs.  The cabins are fully stocked with drinking water (although riders are encouraged to use springs and wells along the trail to supplement), a wide variety of canned and dried foods, propane cooking and lighting, sleeping bags and padded bunks, etc.  It wasn't exactly roughing it-- our fare ranged from tuna casserole to potato pancakes to herb pasta, and there were always fixings for sandwiches and other lunch food to take on the trail the next day.

I brought with me three disposable cameras, marking my first foray into film photography in quite some time.  Wal-Mart's photo lab completely scratched up the negs, and the prints and photo CD's they gave me were awful, but I was able to extract some halfway-decent images using my sister's Nikon film scanner and some digital magic to remove the scratches.  It should be noted, though, that composing a shot with a disposable camera is somewhat difficult, since what you see in the viewfinder bears little resemblance to what actually goes into the lens.  So these images serve as more of a travelogue of the trip than any kind of artistic exercise.  I apologize in advance for the composition (or lack thereof.)