CARRYING PLACE TOWN TOWNSHIP – When you get a really good idea, hold onto it, work tirelessly toward it and be unequivocal in your advocacy – someday your idea will move toward reality.

In 1974 Larry Warren, a former chief executive at Sugarloaf/USA and one of the founding fathers of the town of Carrabassett Valley, thought a wilderness hut-to-hut touring and trail system would be a solid addition to Maine’s outdoor tourism offerings.

After all, the Appalachian Mountain Club’s hut system in New Hampshire had been going pretty steadily since the mid-1800s. Warren and a group of enthusiasts studied up-close the AMC’s offerings and then came back to the Maine to pitch their plan: a mountain hut system that would complement the then-Sugarloaf Touring Center.

At the time, nobody told Warren, nor did he ever guess, that it would take 34 years before his hut idea would be two huts toward completion. Or that some of Maine’s most renowned outdoor enthusiasts, including Leon Gorman of L.L. Bean and Olympic marathon champion Joan Benoit Samuelson, would be backing him in his quest.

On Saturday, standing in near-zero-degree air on the edge of Flagstaff Lake with the Bigelow Mountain Range looming in the background, a crowd of about 100, including Warren, Gorman and supporters large and small, applauded with gloved and mittened hands at the opening of the second hut in the Maine Huts and Trails network.

The nonprofit organization, largely bankrolled by private and corporate donors, has taken Warren’s vision and run with it. The result is two state-of-the-art wilderness complexes, which include off-the-grid green energy systems and bunkhouses with space for 42 visitors.

“Pretty nice hut,” said John Connelly of Falmouth on Saturday morning, making quotation marks in the air to emphasize the word hut.

This isn’t your grandfather’s hunting shack, nor is it a three-sided lean-to with a big space to sleep by the fire. Connelly, the manager of L.L. Bean’s Outdoor Discovery programs, and his wife Nicole Connelly, were eating a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs before setting out on an 11-mile ski to the Flagstaff Lake Hut.

The huts are heated by wood-fired boilers that send warm water to a radiant floor heating system for the main lodge buildings and adjacent bunkhouses.

When it’s 20 below zero outside, as it was Saturday, the constant 55-degree warmth feels downright balmy, especially when it’s coupled with a toasty wood stove heating the dining area.

The Poplar Stream Falls Hut also has its own hydro-power from a small turbine in the nearby stream. That energy is supplemented by a huge solar panel, coupled to a battery array, and backed up by a propane generator.

The Flagstaff Lake Hut will feature a wind turbine, along with solar energy and wood-fired systems. The huts also feature composting toilets, that are modern and odorless, and hot showers that operate on a token system. For about 25 cents a guest can have six minutes of hot water.

Hut master Cacy Alexander and the other three staff members at the facility monitor the energy system and stoke the wood-fired boiler and wood stove. They also cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for both overnight guests and day-trippers.

Advice and friendly conversation are part of the hospitality, which is more like what you might expect from a five-star hotel than a “hut” 2 miles from the nearest paved road. On the job a little more than a month, Alexander said, she really likes the work. The visitors are usually impressed and most share her own passion for being outside in wild places.

Warren said the original was modified over the years as people realized the potential for making the wilderness more accessible and more enjoyable for a wider range of people.

At first, the idea was a humble cabin where guests would “peel the potatoes and carrots for the beef stew,” Warren said.

But as advocates explored the idea of offering meals, they realized they would have to meet the state’s health standards for restaurants and from there realized they would need a way to regularly heat water for cleaning and cooking. That led to a way to harness energy. Far from any power lines, green energy made practical sense and appealed to environmentalists. A full 25 percent of hut construction costs go toward the energy systems, said Maine Huts and Trails Executive Director David Herring.

Much of what was learned in the process of building the first hut was incorporated into the second. Tweaks to the building design included interior windows, tube skylights that let more light into darker interior spaces. An upstairs lounge-sitting-area in the first hut was modified to be a first-floor space that can be closed off for private meetings and retreats. The Flagstaff Hut was also made one-story and it’s gabled ends were clipped, Herring said, to better camouflage the building, making it less obtrusive from the water of the nearby lake.

“It’s evolved to a standard that’s higher than what we originally set out to accomplish (in the 1970s),” Warren said.

For decades, Warren’s pitch missed its mark and fell on deaf ears, but steady changes in the ownership of forest land in the 1990s helped the hut system gain traction, he said.

As Wall Street looked for ways to squeeze greater profits from the paper industry for shareholders, executives began liquidating the large tracts of land paper companies owned in Maine. The sale of that land raised fears among wilderness advocates that the long tradition of paper companies allowing public access for recreation would end, Warren said.

“That change in ownership threatened public access to private lands,” he said. The question of who would own Maine’s wilderness, 90 percent of which was owned by corporations, and how accessible it would be to regular people, loomed large in many people’s minds. So the idea of a hut system that could secure forever some of the wildest and most scenic forest corridors in Maine soon had new support.

Part of the support came from businesspeople such as L.L. Bean’s Gorman and his top staff people, including Bob Peixotto, senior vice president and chief operations officer, and company president Chris McCormick. Both donated time and money to help the hut system.

“This is a labor of love,” Peixotto said Saturday.

He and Herring see the hut system in a big-picture way.

“It’s not just about us and what we offer, but how we fit in with all the other offerings in western Maine,” Herring said. “How do we complement these other recreational activities and how do they complement us?”

Quality and affordable access to resources that can be enjoyed by visitors and Mainers also helps build a culture that appreciates wilderness and its offerings beyond the economics of things, Peixotto said. “Really, what we have here is an opportunity to create another whole generation of conservationists.”

Warren, known as the founder of Maine Huts and Trails, said while he was pleased to see the second hut in the system open, he was far from satisfied.

“We still have challenges in getting No. 3 done,” he said. “Now we are asking, ‘How do we get over that hurdle?’ When No. 12 is done, then we can sit back and relax a little.”