Backcountry skiing Idaho

Our return to the Idaho winter wonderland. Last year, David invited us all up to his family's condo to partake in some skiing around Ketchum. We had such a great time in the snow that David was kind enough to organize another trip.

This year, we would up the ante a bit and really organize a backcountry adventure, as opposed to last year's daily trips. David researched and organized a visit to some of the backcountry yurts around Galena, Idaho. To make the trip a little more sane, we also flew in this year, instead of making the 12-hour drive from San Francico.

We arrived at Hailey and drove up to the condo in Ketchum. The next day, we loaded up the cars and drove up to meet with our guide (in order to reserve the yurts we had to have a guide ski us in).

During the planning phase, we opted to just go into one of the yurts instead of trying to hook up multiple yurts into a several-day affair.

The ski into the yurt was pretty straight forward but was made a little more complicated by the fact that a few of our party were using backcountry skiis which were not providing the required traction on the ascents. This slowed down the group and created a lot of frustration on the few of the group that didn't have skins.

But, we all made it to the yurt in one piece and while folks were pretty tired, spirits were generally high.

The yurt itself was incredibly well outfitted with plenty of space, decent amenities, and a wood-fired sauna to boot!

We spent the next couple of days skiing around the area and making our way back to civilization. This is definitely a destination to keep in mind for future trips!