A Hut-to-Hut Adventure in Utah's Uinta Mountains

The rhythm of my breath corresponds with each forward slide of my skis as I make my way to the ridge where Shaun Deutschlander and Rachael Burks stand waiting. They’ve got grins plastered on their faces and once I reach them and look up from the skin track, I understand why.

Our 10,000-foot-high vantage point offers a spectacular view of the Uinta Mountains’ craggy and snow-covered spine to its intersection with the Wasatch Range. Deutschlander points out the Uintas’ 12,500-foot Hayden Peak, three blocky spires she calls the Jenga Towers and the Wasatch’s highest peak, Mt. Nebo, elevation 11,933 feet. I pick out other landmarks I’m more familiar with: Mount Timpanogos, Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon and the Park City ski resorts. Bluebird skies allow the unobstructed views we take in as we catch our breath. And where we stand, just 30 as-the-crow-flies miles away from Park City’s Main Street, we are blissfully alone.

Like many skiers, I took up backcountry skiing during the early days of the pandemic. But up until this day, most of my backcountry skiing had been spent in the sidecountry, or in terrain in close proximity to a ski resort. I yearned, however, for the dreamy-sounding hut skiing vacations my friends had taken in Canada or Europe, where guides led them on ethereal ski tours by day, and then at night, they’d cozy up in a snug hut or yurt, many furnished with saunas and a chef. And so when I learned that Deutschlander was creating a similar bucket list offering in the close-by Uintas’, I jumped at the chance to check it out.

Finding Inspiration in a Less-famous Mountain Range

Despite being the highest east-west trending mountain range in the contiguous U.S., many people from outside of Utah are unfamiliar with the Uinta Mountains, located just east of Park City. Much of the range’s 3,500 square miles is designated wilderness (the highest level of public lands protection), meaning the mountain peaks, sweeping meadows and alpine lakes are largely undeveloped. Deutschlander fell in love with the Uintas at age 15 during a backpacking trip; an affection that deepened in the early aughts when, after she graduated from college and moved to Park City to begin building her guiding resume. In 2012, she launched her own guiding outfit, Inspired Summit Adventures (ISA), and began hatching plans for a way to allow her clients to tap into the Uintas’ off-the-beaten solitude. “Most people who visit the Uintas don’t go beyond roadside destinations, like Trial Lake and Lilly Lake,” she says. “I saw an opportunity  to create a way for families to go farther and experience the Uintas that I know.”

Into the Woods

It’s an early morning at the beginning of March when I arrive at ISA’s Park City headquarters for the first day of my Western Uinta Hut System trip. It’s just beginning to snow as I step out of my car and meet up with Deutschlander, ISA Guide Sam Thackeray and the rest of the crew.

Following some excited parking lot chatter, we place our skis and gear into the long trailers where Deutschlander and Thackeray have already loaded in three snowmobiles and four days of food. We hop into the two trucks for the 30-minute drive from Park City to the Mirror Lake Highway’s Upper Setting Road trailhead. There we transfer the gear and food into the toboggans. Once everything is secure, we pair up, two to a snowmobile, and begin the six mile ride up to Castle Peak yurt.

The snow-flocked pine trees close in on the track as we approach the yurt, situated just below Castle Peak’s 10,100-foot summit. Inside is a wood stove with a pizza oven and three bunk beds, each with a double-sized mattress on the bottom bunk. The well-outfitted kitchen has a propane gas stove and a wide prep area made from raw-edge wooden countertops. A long table that centers the room, big enough for eight, is where we eat dinners and breakfasts over the next two days.

Deutschlander is a dedicated proponent of Leave No Trace principles, and familiarizes us with the W.A.G. (Waste Alleviation & Gelling) bag outhouse (Read: How to Poop in the Outdoors). She also shows us the wood-fired barrel sauna and the roped off area for gathering snow to melt for drinking and cooking. Then we hastily throw the coolers and gear into the yurt, do an avalanche transceiver check (an essential step in backcountry skiing safety) and hop back on the snowmobiles to make the quick trip to the start of our afternoon tour.

It’s still snowing as we begin the ascent toward Castle Peak. I estimate that about four inches has accumulated on the slightly crusty, slightly spongy snow surface. We start with a warmup, skiing the fun and short Temporary Obsession trees (all run names in this story are unofficial, used by ISA for reference only). Afterward, we head to the top of Temporary Obsession proper, a slightly shelved slope that lets us catch a little air as we hoot and holler all the way down.

A Catered Yurt Experience

Twilight casts the forest in a lavender hue as we arrive back at the snowmobiles. ISA also runs ski mountaineering camps every spring, where advanced backcountry skiers learn mountaineering skills while winter camping for four days in the Uintas. “I’d never stay out this late if we were camping,” Deutschlander says. “Having the snowmobiles and a yurt to return to allows us to take advantage of every minute of daylight.”

Back at the yurt, Thackeray puts on the kettle and lays out tea, hot chocolate and miso soup mix. We chat over our steaming mugs as Deutschlander constructs an Instagram-worthy charcuterie board. While we talk and snack on the picture-perfect spread, Thackeray rolls out dough for pizzas and makes a salad. That dinner, along with the rest of the meals I ate during those four days, is delicious. “There’s a lot we can’t control out here, like the snow conditions and the weather and so we do a lot to control the things we can,” Thackeray says as he takes pizzas in and out of the oven, “like the food, having a sauna and high quality mattresses.” We all eat more than our fill and are tucked into our sleeping bags (atop, what I can confirm, are very comfortable mattresses), with the lights out by 9 p.m.

In the morning, Deutschlander and Thackeray check the weather and the Utah Avalanche Center forecast, as they do each morning we are in the backcountry. Six inches of snow has fallen overnight and it’s still snowing. (Unlike much of the Uintas, cell reception is available from the Castle Peak Yurt.) We finish our coffee and French toast, make sandwiches for our packs and head outside to the snowmobiles. At Castle Lake we skin up Duke Mountain to ski lap after lap on Shelves & Pillows, carving graceful S’s into the untracked powder every time.

We return to the snowmobiles by 4 p.m., allowing plenty of time for après-ski snacks and sauna sessions. Over dinner (potstickers and curry), the guides discuss the next day’s itinerary: an 8-mile route with 2,500 feet of climbing and a 5,000-foot descent to the Smith and Morehouse yurt — a traverse representing the centerpiece of the terrain accessed by the Western Uintas Hut System. After helping with cleanup, I climb into my sleeping bag with a book but am not able to stay awake long enough to read even one page.

Uncharted Skiing in the Uintas

Thackeray breaks trail through the fluffy new snow under clear-as-a-bell blue skies. The last two days’ storm had obscured visibility, and so when at the Shingle Peak summit, we pause for a moment to take in the sweeping views. The day’s first run is Football Field, a low-angle slope that feels like it's covered with feathers. At the bottom, Deutschlander calls for an extended break before the next leg of the traverse: an hour-long skin to the itinerary’s highpoint, the 10,656-foot Sunset Peak. After snacks, Deutschlander takes the lead, putting in an easy-to-follow skin track. When we pass briefly over a 30-ish degree slope, she instructs us to put the length of three school buses between one other. The group falls into a consistent climbing pace, stopping intermittently for photos. Then suddenly we’re on top, taking in the spellbinding view I described at the beginning of this story. “Not bad, eh?” Deutschlander says with a wide smile, her silvery braid swaying in the breeze.

We traverse Sunset’s meandering ridgeline to the top of a long, wide-open run any mountain manager in the world would relish having within his or her resort boundary. “I’ve been looking at this run for a long time,” Deutschlander says. As far as any of us know, no one had ever skied that run before us, including Deutschlander, who is positively giddy as she launches herself down the slope.

When it’s my turn, I point my body downhill and push off. I can feel the euphoria build as the slope steepens to about 28 degrees, similar in pitch to a blue-square resort-rated run. I let out a “whoop!” just before reaching the rest of the group. Thackeray then leads the way on a “party ski” (skiing all together at the same time) into the gladed Erickson Basin. The terrain flattens and we stop to stare at a cluster of Aspen trees with trunks at least two feet in diameter. “A mother grove,” Deutschlander says. We pole briefly through another forested party-ski pitch, called Heaven’s Gate, make an easy stream crossing and then hit the snowmobile road at the bottom of Box Canyon.

After that long and glorious day outside, arriving at the Smith and Morehouse Yurt, tucked into the trees along the frozen Smith and Morehouse Reservoir, feels like Christmas morning. There, the toboggans are unloaded and chips, salsa and guacamole are set up on the dining table. “God bless the porters,” I think as I dip a chip.

The last day of the trip takes on a definitively more leisurely tone. Following a long breakfast, Thackeray leads us out for a short tour into the glacier-carved mountain sides surrounding the yurt. Conversation comes easy and laughter is frequent, as it tends to be between people who’ve spent multiple days moving together in the mountains.