Polar Star & Seipel Huts, Part 2: The John Seipel Story

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Exploring the history behind the Polar Star Inn and Seipel Hut, it all starts with one man: John Seipel, the original owner, designer, builder, hutmaster and caretaker of the Polar Star Inn. 

Cultivating a Passion

John grew up in the San Bernardino mountains of California, and came to love the outdoors from a young age, going on camping trips with his parents. But his love for skiing truly developed after he moved to Colorado for college, attending both CSU and CU. 

At age 20, he migrated to the mountains and got a job with the Highway Department in Eagle, before moving into carpentry. Carpentry and skiing became his two great passions, and since he couldn’t afford a lift ticket at Vail, he says, he got into cross country skiing as a way to spend a lot of time outside. 

“I was like a kid in a candy store,” John says. “This was long before fiberglass skis were available, and we were on wooden skis and leather boots.”

He started visiting Colorado’s existing backcountry huts, and became heavily involved with the 10th Mountain Hut Association in its early days, taking many trips to McNamara and Margy’s, the system’s first two huts. 

 

The “Lightbulb Moment”

As he explored even more of his local backcountry terrain, John began envisioning ways the hut system could expand, and started scouting ideas for potential hut sites. Thinking through how to best provide more connections, John says he had a “lightbulb moment” to build a hut near Fulford, outside of Eagle, that could be a key link in connecting the Vail and Aspen valleys through hut travel. 

He sat on the idea for a couple of seasons, continuing to search for the ideal location and opportunity. Finally, in 1987, he found an old mining claim in the area that he was able to secure. With both a water source and stellar views, he knew he’d landed on the perfect spot — this would eventually become home to the Polar Star Inn (and, later, also the Seipel Hut.)

While initially scoping out the property — in 4-5 feet of snow in May, no less! — John says he was hiking around the snow drifts in the “wee hours of the morning,” and saw the North Star shining brightly above him from the North-facing aspect. 

“It was right there, just staring back at me,” he says. “That was another lightbulb moment, and I knew that Polar Star would be the name!”

With the idea firmly solidified and the property now locked down, it was time to design and build.

 

A Vision Brought to Life

John conceptualized the original design for the Polar Star Inn, and it was specifically designed to go up quickly. With a crew of three, including his brother Ted, John and his team camped out at the site and got the Polar Star Inn put together in less than three months time. 

“We built the thing in nine weeks, and I’ve got the double hernia to prove it!” he says.

They started the building process in August, and by winter that same year, the hut was open for business — and it only took off from there!

 

A Labor of Love

Meanwhile, the 10th Mountain Hut System was building momentum quickly, and ready to keep expanding. The team was inspired by John’s ability to build in the remote backcountry, and he was ultimately hired to help build several other early 10th Mountain Huts — including Fowler Hut, Jackal Hut, 10th Mountain Division Hut, Uncle Bud’s Hut, and Skinner Hut — playing an integral role in helping develop the hut system into the robust network that it remains today.

In fact, John built two huts at the same time, each summer for two summers in a row to complete this work, with his brother Ted working and camping out alongside him as the main carpenter, along with many other great crew members and volunteers.

For John, this work was truly a labor of love, combining two of the things he enjoyed most: hut travel and carpentry (along with plenty of time outside, of course!).

 

A Treasured Era

John would come to dedicate many great years to maintaining the Polar Star Inn, and create countless treasured memories there with his family. 

He maintained the Polar Star Inn by himself for the first decade of business, skiing up every seven to nine days. Then he got married and had a daughter, and as things got busier at home, he started hiring other team members to help out with the hut checks and maintenance. One of those was Shawn Gallus, with whom John says he became “fast friends” as soon as they met, and who would come to work with him at Polar Star Inn for many years. 

John originally had a caretaker unit in the Polar Star Inn where he would often stay with his family when they went up to check the hut and spend time there, but as his daughter grew, he decided they needed a dedicated space of their own. In 1995, he built a smaller stand-alone hut on the property where they could stay. This hut was originally named Carl’s Cabin, in honor of a friend who found the design for it – but it would later come to be known as the Seipel Hut, and is now also available for public bookings through 10th Mountain Huts.  

He and his wife, Carol, built a corral in front of Carl’s Cabin, and went up to the property often with their horses. 

 

The Next Chapter

As time went by and John got older, it became increasingly difficult for him to stay involved with maintaining the huts. He and his family had moved farther away, and he also had a heart surgery. It was time for a new chapter to unfold for his beloved Polar Star Inn. 

He knew exactly who he wanted to call on: his longtime right-hand man Shawn, and his friend Nick Cherney, both of whom John says he “admired greatly.”

“With those two, I knew we had a good match,” he says. “I felt like by selling it to the two of them, I was sure it would continue to operate in the same vein – it would not become a giant snowmobile retreat or anything like that.”

At age 65, John officially sold the Polar Star Inn and Seipel Hut to Shawn and Nick, and its next (and current!) chapter began. 

 

One Last Journey

In April 2019, at 69 years old and on the heels of his heart valve replacement, John took one final hut trip — and he made it an epic one! 

With Shawn and Nick leading the charge, a team of nine skiers was assembled for John’s trek, and the group planned out an eight-day, seven-night itinerary that would enable him to visit each of the huts he’d helped build, plus a couple more (Vance’s Cabin and Betty Bear Hut). The group also included both John’s daughter and stepdaughter, several other former Polar Star Inn caretakers, and local filmmaker Hamilton Pevec, who was hired to document the trip. 

With strenuous snow conditions, the journey became even more adventurous than planned, and Pevec captured it all on video, turning it into a production called “It’s All Uphill from Here: The John Seipel Story,” which was released in 2021. This part-adventure-film, part-historical-documentary is available to watch on YouTube, here. 

Today, at 76, John’s time on skis is behind him, but he looks back on that final adventure fondly, and with gratitude — as with all of his time spent at the Polar Star Inn and other 10th Mountain huts. 

“Everybody should have something in their lives that is as cool as that was for me,” he says of his experience with owning the Polar Star Inn, and all the memories it gave him. “I had no idea it would be so spiritually successful, but looking back I see that I was really meant to be a part of it.”