The whole family visited the Spruce Hole Yurt this past March (2019), achieving a milestone that I have been looking forward to since we first had kids.
Getting there as a family is doable.
Spruce Hole yurt is located north of Chama, NM just over the border into Colorado. It’s a 2.24 mi gentle uphill hike (580 ft total elevation gain) from the parking spot. The yurt’s visitor-log listed over 10 cumulative feet of snow through the winter, and there was still tons left despite our late-March trip. At one point we hiked past a road sign, with only the top half sticking out of the snow.
Get Directions
The day we hiked in was mostly overcast and pretty windy, with lots of spindrift, so it was intense for the boys at times. Karen and I were both carrying packs and pulling sleds, wearing snowshoes, so it was a bit of a slog. We didn’t get started until after lunch, and Emerson (3yrs) promptly fell asleep in my sled, so I ended up pulling his weight the whole way as well. Bodie (7yrs) and Jasper (6yrs) were troopers, and made it under their own power, though there was a fair amount of complaining to contend with and Bodie had a minor meltdown a quarter mile from the yurt. Fortunately, there was little to no fresh snowfall, so we did not have to break trail in deep snow.
But we weren’t sure we would make it…
All in all, it was a bold move to take all three boys that far in those winter conditions—not unsafe, because we could have turned around and walked rapidly downhill back to the car at any point—but we pushed the boys close to their limit. We could have put all the boys in the sleds to go downhill back to the car, but we couldn’t have dragged all three of them uphill to the yurt with all our stuff. So we really were dependent on Bodie and Jasper to keep it together long enough to get themselves to the yurt.
The Yurt was worth the trek.
The yurt itself was fantastic. Of the handful of yurts I’ve been to, it was easily the nicest. The yurt is built above an open basement where there was plentiful wood and sleds for the kids to use. There are stairs to reach the yurt in the summer– but for us, the snow was level with the porch, and required a tunnel of stairs to be dug out to reach the privy. The yurt has two bunk beds, each with a full on the bottom and a single mattress up top. Maximum of six would fit in the beds–we thought about putting two up top but someone would definitely have rolled off. The second night Jasper slept on the floor.
The woodstove was a really great one—easy to start and control and re-start (sometimes they can be downright temperamental). The kitchen is large and beautiful and well-stocked. The table wraps around a center post that provides hand/footholds up to a chair to access the skylight, first I’ve ever seen that. The yurt even had solar panels to power LED lighting for the long hours of darkness, and they were way nicer than the usual propane lantern option.
Snow + Yurt + People = Good Times.
The boys completely loved the trip. The difficulty of the hike in was forgotten within moments.
Typically, the boys primary activities were building legos and playing cars (as we say: our trips could be described as playing legos in exotic places). They also thoroughly enjoyed sledding the hill behind the yurt, and carving out a slide that ended down on the stairs to the privy. (That last activity necessitated labor on my part, to periodically dig out and rebuild the path to the privy.)
I have many fond memories of winter yurt and hut trips from the years before kids. To me, yurt/hut trips are all about good friends, good conversation, and good food in remote and spectacular places.
The typical yurt is situated in a wild winter location, with tons of snow at a high altitude somewhere in hardcore mountains. Generally it can only be reached after many tiring uphill miles on skis or snowshoes while carrying a heavy pack full of scrumptious and excessive food and drink. Getting to the yurt/hut can be hardcore, depending on the location and the conditions. I recall skiing in the dark (can’t see the trail!), and skiing in a snowstorm (no trail anymore!), and skiing in the dark in a snowstorm (can’t see jack sh**! are we even going in the right direction?!). I recall anxious route-finding to locate the yurt at the end of the day, after all previous tracks and trail have been erased with wonderful fresh snowfall, and I recall the relief and joy of finally finding the yurt… I recall filling a two-quart plastic jug with raw eggs, to be cooked with sausage and bacon and hash browns for breakfast; and pricey wine and whiskey. When it came to food and drink, we did not compromise much. I recall games of Kings, lots of laughing, night-time antics in the snow… In short, a yurt trip combines some legitimate outdoor winter adventure with companionship and well-earned hedonism.
Yurts and Huts are the best way to do winter camping.
And what the heck is a yurt? A yurt is a traditional nomadic mongolian dwelling, still in widespread use today. Mongolians build them from naturally sourced materials, and still use them as a mobile dwelling, to be taken down and re-located as necessary. In the western united states, the yurt is a relatively inexpensive, semi-permanent one-room shelter, halfway between a tent and a cabin, that can be purchased in a kit for $5,000-15,000 and assembled in week or a month (depending on how many friends pitch in). It is used mainly as a winter basecamp, as it usually has no windows (so it’s cave-like in the summer) and can be easily heated with a small woodstove to a super-cozy, clothes-stripping temperature. Out in the American West, yurts are a thing. Mainly a winter thing.
Huts are also a thing, and here I’m referring to the 10th mountain division network of huts in Colorado. Those huts are beautiful, and the secret about that scene got out years ago; they are now a bit pricey and need to be reserved a year in advance when they first start selling spots for the next-season.
Whether a yurt or a hut, the deal is much the same (for most of them). Beds are provided, but usually not bedding–you bring your own sleeping bag. Propane stove and cookware is provided, but you bring your own food and drink. Heating is from a woodstove, which you start when you arrive and stoke in the middle of the night if you want it to stay warm through to morning. There is no running water; water is obtained by melting snow in a big pot on the woodstove (no running water). There is an outhouse for a bathroom. You pack out all your own garbage. Before you leave, you split and restock the firewood supply from the woodpile located somewhere just outside or underneath the structure. There is no electricity; night-time illumination is from headlamp, or occasionally a propane lantern.
Winter yurt trips require adventurous spirits & good preparation and you should absolutely go next year
To reach a winter yurt/hut, you must be proficient on skis or snowshoes. Proficiency on snowshoes is easy (do you know how to walk? Well then you can snowshoe!). Ski-touring is the preferred method, if you have the skills and equipment, as it is considerably more efficient. You will spend less time pushing snow down, and more time sliding forward across the top. But don’t go buying a ski setup just to reach a yurt. It sort of works the other way around–once you have a ski touring setup and know how to use it, then you have it available to use for reaching the yurts. Also, there are many different ski-setups that can work for touring, but your resort alpine setup is not one of them. So if you want to get into ski touring, find some friends to help indoctrinate you (and borrow their gear to try it out).
Also, above all else, if you decide to try a winter trip to a yurt or a hut, make sure you are a competent navigator, with a good robust system in place. I always make sure to download or create GPS waypoints and a track, and upload them to my handheld GPS, and bring backup batteries for it. I load the same info onto the iphone (into Gaia) as a backup. If it’s a bright sunny day then getting temporarily off route is no big deal, and you can see your back trail . If it’s a whiteout so you can’t see trail markers, and snowing hard so your tracks are erased—and particularly if it then gets dark—it could cost you your life. So hope for the best weather, but prepare for the worst. With my GPS and the preparation ahead of time, I could navigate to the shelter in a blizzard if necessary (or, more likely, back to the car).
But the name of this blog is Southwest Family ADVENTURES, not Southwest Family Safetimes, so the added risk and difficulty simply requires additional skill and conveys commensurate reward. In other words… it’s totally worth it.
