Clark Peak Yurt

Waaaay back in October I reserved the Clark Peak Yurt in the Northern Colorado rockies and last weekend we finally got to take our trip. I can barely plan what I'm doing tomorrow, let alone what I'm doing 5 months so the wait was killing me. For a while I was bummed about the timing of the trip because 3 bike races ended up getting scheduled that weekend and the warm weather was taking its toll on the high country snow. But as the date drew nearer, it became clear that we were really going to luck out. There was a lot of rain along the front range at the end of the week, which made for miserable bike racing conditions. That same moisture, however, translated into a lot of snow up at the yurt. It was heavy wet snow, but at least it was snow.

Shana and Jason met us at our house Saturday morning, and after a stop at a Gibs Bagel we started up the canyon. All the recent rain had an unexpected (to me) effect on the road through Poudre Canyon and I'm sad to say the the Subaru fell victim to a rock slide. We were about 10 miles into the canyon when a nice large rock (boulder?) came rolling down the canyon wall and smacked squarely in the front driver side wheel. Amazingly, the wheel took almost all of the force and the only other mark on the car were a couple 2" scratches on the side of the bumper. The tire, of course, was trashed. The rock ripped a nice hole in it. We immediately pulled over and put the spare donut on. (I've gotten a lot of wheel changing practice lately. I just swapped my winter wheels for my summer wheels. Then one of my summer tires had a nail in it so I put the winter one back on. Then I had the tire repaired and put it back on. That's a lot of tire changing.)

The drive up the canyon was slow with the donut and crappy stock Subaru tires, but we eventually made it to the trailhead. It was snowing like crazy. It's only a 2 mile hike in, but I swear it feels longer with a large backpack. We had no reason to hurry, so we strolled in with frequent stops to adjust equipment and try to get some oxygen at 9000 feet above sea level.

Snow in the trees

Julie and Nathan beat us to the yurt by an hour so they had already started on a fire when we got there. Good thing too, because the wet snow that was falling was soaking through my jacket and I was pretty wet. Shortly after we arrived, Owen and Taylor showed up and our full yurt was present. The Clark Peak Yurt is the newest one in that area, and it's bigger than most of the others with a capacity of 9 people (3 double beds and 3 single beds). We only had 8, so we had an extra bed to throw gear onto.

After polishing off some of the Dale's Pale Ale that Owen and Taylor brought, we got ourselves settled and started working on dinner and skiing plans. By the time we went to bed, we had made it through about a liter of Bailey's, some schnapps, brandy, and whiskey. It turns out that all that stuff mixes well with snow. :) Yurts have a tendency to get chilly over night so we stoked up the fire nice and hot in an effort to try and keep the yurt warm over night. Big mistake. We roasted for the first part of the night and none of us could sleep until the temperature went down (Jason opened the door for a while).

Sunday morning was a little slow. Christine and I were doing breakfast, and we thought it'd be fun to have some pancakes. They turned out great (we should have brought more mix), but it took a while. Next time I think we'll save that for a morning where we're not skiing afterward. Owen and Taylor started out before the rest of us because we figured they'd be fast and they also needed to get back to their car at the end of the day. The second group out was Shana, Nathan, Jason, and I. That left Christine and Julie to bring up the rear.

Taylor skiing

We had intended on going up to Ruby Jewel Lake, but decided instead to hit a near by slope when the lake looked pretty clouded in. I'm glad Taylor and Owen were around to break trail, because that snow was wet and heavy. Nathan and I did a couple runs on the hill, and they were pretty good. From the top of that ridge you could see a lot of other terrain that would be fun in safer conditions. Hopefully next year we'll get to explore that. The sun eventually came out and warmed things right up. Not typically a good thing with new snow sitting on a slab (the water creates a nice lubrication between the layers) so we got out of there after Jason and I did a final run.

The yurt got considerably less crowded on Sunday because half of the people needed to leave. Christine, Julie, Nathan, and I spent the evening eating drinking and playing Uno (which I apparently stink at). After a simple bagel and cream cheese breakfast on Monday, we packed up, cleaned up, and headed on out to the car. Getting the the car was a simple enough task, but Nathan and I managed to take a wrong turn and add a whole lot more exercise to the trip. We ended up going a few hundred yards downhill in the wrong direction. Ugh. We'll know better for next time.

I look forward to another yurt trip next year.