It’s so Fun it Yurts!

Hidden Treasure Yurt

School was out and the snow had been falling; nothing quite gets you more excited for a backcountry snowboard trip than this.

A large group of us packed up on 12/16 and headed out for treeline on New York Mountain to spend 3 nights at the Hidden Treasure Yurts. These yurts are at 11,200’ just about .5 miles above the Polar Star cabin a 10^th mountain hut that looks very luxurious for backcountry travelers.

We left the Yeoman Park trailhead around 11:00am and started the trek in. Although it is only 6.2 miles it felt like quite a slog. This could have been because I didn’t quite have my touring legs under me yet or the 3,200-foot elevation gain with a pack loaded for a very comfortable 3 nights out was weighing me down, but whatever it was I was feeling each foot of elevation.  The tour in is very peaceful though and relatively straightforward.  The first 4 miles or so you follow the road up to the town of Fullford where you then turn up into the woods on a single-track path. As I said it is relatively straightforward, but don’t be fooled by a right hand turn shortly after going up into the woods or you will disappointingly find yourself back in Fullford. After setting an easy going pace and taking a break for lunch we didn’t arrived at the yurts until around 4:30pm. But I was welcomed into my first yurting experience with a beautiful sunset.

As I said before this was the first yurt that I had been in but overall I have to say they are a pretty cool structure.  Once you get the wood stove going they stay very toasty warm, and the propane lights keep it just bright enough in the evenings to give you the feeling that you are still roughing it, somewhat at least. Cooking was relatively easy as well with the propane burners especially once you had a good system setup for melting water on the wood stove. My only complaint would be that with a yurt full of people there is not exactly counter space so bringing meals that need a lot of prep was tricky. Also I was surprised how toasty they stayed into the night, if you kept the fire stoked it was really warm, but we were all pretty lazy once we hit the bed so there were a few times that I was grateful that I brought my 0* bag.

The first morning we went on a bit of an exploratory tour as we headed out of the yurts down the valley towards the Polar Star hut. We ended up in some miserably tight trees before coming out in the bottom of a wash and making our way back onto a road.  From here we skinned up Adams peak and found some good west facing open powder runs, although very short in elevation the terrain was a lot of fun, with mellow rollovers and small pillows to be found in knee-deep powder. We also got a great view of New York Mountain and the surrounding areas where we spotted our lines for the next day, which coincidently just happened to be the west facing lines right above the yurts that we thought would be wind blown and hard pack, oops.

The following day true to plan we headed up from the yurts finding amazing lines! As we came out into the open on New York mountain we followed the rock band around getting shot after shot of open untracked powder lines that dropped you down into perfectly spaced trees filled with little pillows.  We lapped this all day working our way across each glade until as one of my yurt mates said “we had thoroughly molested the pristine snow” and our legs didn’t work anymore.  On a note of caution this is all an old mining area and there are unmarked mine shafts underneath the snow and lots of fallen trees so be careful! We heard a very scary story around the whiskey bottle that evening of someone falling into a mineshaft and having to brace against the side as they took their skis off and climbed out.  Also to save time trying to find the goods to be lapped reference this map: http://bit.ly/fATCVT , it makes the goods no secret.

The last morning we cleaned and packed up early wanting to beet the Sunday ski traffic on I-70, and our legs were a little too rubbery and sore to be convinced to get us up anymore laps. The skin out wasn’t too bad though we cut off a bit of distance by taking a left about 1 mile down from the yurt, this is the turn you shouldn’t take on the way up.  This leads you to the turn of to Fullford were we had to convert for the last time and skin up the road about a mile before we could switch back to snowboards and cruise the rest of the way out.

Overall the Yurts were a lot of fun, they offer a great alternative to a backcountry cabin and the terrain on New York Mountain is hard to beet.  Also we had great snow stability, which allowed us to move up into the more exposed areas without too much concern for avalanches with all of the snow we’ve been getting in Colorado.

Cheers!

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!