(written 1/17/22 about a trip 1/21/18)
Another dad and I took our families to the Long John yurt at Enchanted Forest x-country ski area, just east of Red River, NM. It is an excellent beginner yurt experience: the hike is short (2.25 miles one way), the trails are groomed, and for a bit of extra $$ they’ll snowmobile a trailer of your gear to the yurt so you don’t have to lug it. When two dads are pulling the weight for five kids, that is awesome!
This trip was an unusual winter experience. The winter was so dry there was no snow. Bummer! For a ski area, that’s super depressing. The week before the trip, the owner at Enchanted Forest called me to ask if we wanted to cancel and get future credit—they weren’t even open, so we would be out there on our own. We elected to carry on. The owner suggested that we drive all the way to the yurt since it was so dry (just to be clear, that’s not an option when the ski area is operational and covered in snow). The dads conferred, and we decided that I would drive in alone and drop off the gear only, then come back to the parking lot and we would go ahead and hike to the yurt. To earn the experience with a couple miles of hiking certainly made it feel more of a legit experience than having the car parked out front.
And then, while we were out there (we were out for two nights, three days), it totally dumped on us. Tons of wonderful beautiful snow. So the kids sledded a lot and loved it and we got the full-on winter yurt experience. The hike back out was a full-on winter wonderland.
Luckily, it didn’t occur to me to worry about the snowy drive to retrieve the gear until the hike out. We had way too much stuff (big bins full of yummy food and game and candy and whisky) to carry out, and the whole ski area was closed so there wasn’t any snowmobile-trailer option. So we hiked back to the two cars, dumped our stuff, and then all seven of us piled into the Xterra and we did some exciting snow driving back to the yurt to pick up the bins. The kids were thrilled, it was a big big party in the back of the car let me tell you, driving through the woods on a super narrow windy road, getting fresh tracks, sometimes getting a bit slippy… all great fun. It all worked out great (though if the snow had been much deeper, or wet, it might have been a different story).
The yurt itself isn’t my favorite ever. The wood stove is finicky, requiring frustrating effort in the middle of the night (I think it just needs a longer chimney for better draw), and it’s super dark because the panes in the door are the only windows. But the hike and the experience are doable with really little kids; for that, it’s unbeatable. I don’t know of any other “beginner” sort of yurt experience like this.
(Note for those considering this: there is Long John yurt which is 2.25 miles but there is also Little John yurt which is a little over half that distance.)
