Journeys: Uinta Mountains, Utah - Snowshoe and Yurt

Monday, January 7, 2013

Uinta Mountains, Utah - Snowshoe and Yurt

I spent the past weekend in the Uinta Mountains of northeast Utah enjoying clear skies and sunshine above the dreary valley inversion that has plagued Salt Lake City for the past several days. Jim invited me to join a group of people that had reserved a Bear River Outdoor Recreation Alliance yurt on the north slope of the Uintas, about 30 miles from Evanston, WY.

Lily Lake Yurt

New friend Julie, Jim, and I headed to the trail head near Bear River Lodge Saturday morning and began the 3 mile snowshoe to the yurt. We were joined later in the day by new friend Roger. The first couple miles of the trail were closed to snowmobiles and the snow was so packed from other snowshoers and cross country skiers that it was almost unnecessary to use snowshoes. The last mile of the trail toward Lily Lake was open to snowmobiles and was very packed as well.

Jim and Julie on Sage Draw Trail

Julie on Sage Draw Trail

Sage Draw Trail on the way to Lily Lake

Snowshoeing with Jake

It took less than two hours to reach the yurt. The Lily Lake Yurt was well stocked with firewood and propane and the structure itself was clean and very well maintained. The Lily Lake Yurt is one of five yurts in the Lily Lake Yurt System maintained by the Bear River Outdoor Recreation Alliance. There was a wood stove to keep the yurt warm, a table and basic cooking equipment, and six bunk beds with sleeping pads.

Wood stove inside the yurt

Sleeping bunks

After Roger joined us, we spent time walking around Lily Lake and enjoying some good food and torturous card games. Later that night we took advantage of the clear, dark skies for some fantastic star gazing. It was a great weekend getaway with awesome new friends.

Roger was very excited to be at the yurt

View from Lily Lake

Jim loved converting snow to water

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess