Multi-day trip to Lick Creek yurts in McCall provides access to stellar backcountry skiing

Mike Erlebach on the shoulder of Beaver Dam Peak. Snow was rugged, but cool adventure.
(Courtesy Jim Pace) 

Chris Reino making tele turns in sweet sugar-like *pow* in the Burn Line area above the Lick Creek yurts. 

We had great weather for the duration of our trip, and great snow! Beaver Dam peak in the background.
L to R, Wendy, Jim Young and Steve at the top of the Burn Line, ready to make another run. 

Hi all,

I had the privilege of taking a 4-day backcountry ski trip to the Lick Creek yurts near McCall recently with a bunch of friends from Boise and McCall.

Timing-wise, we lucked out with a string of gorgeous bluebird days, a foot of fresh snow, and top-shelf food every day. We felt blessed amid the glory of all of those big mountain peaks lording above us, sometimes lit up by a brilliant sunrise or sunset.



"It was the high point of my winter," says my partner, Wendy Wilson.

"It's nice to ski soft powder in the sunshine," adds Mack Lyons of Boise. "There's an enormous amount of terrain to ski up there. I've been up there two times, and I can see why you keep going back."

"It's pretty amazing to step outside the yurt, jump into your skis and enjoy some of the best skiing in the world, right off the deck," adds Jim Young of Boise and McCall.

Beer-30 after our last full day of backcountry skiing ... 

On Day 1, picture Wendy, Mack, Jim and the rest of our group climbing up a skin trail to a spot snowcat driver Gregg Lawley calls "No Complaints," where there's some sweet north-facing fields of powder waiting below, just a 15-minute climb from the yurts. We de-skin and pick our own personal line of virgin snow through shin-high sugar. That brings a big smile and whoops of joy from everyone as they make perfect signatures in the snow.

After a few of those runs that afternoon, I looked at the slopes above and saw a lot of blank fields of snow below the peaks, and some that had been shredded by the guys who were there for several days before us. Still, it looked there'd be a ton of terrain we could ski close to the yurts for the next two days! Fun thing to ponder as we enjoyed some brewskis and wine on the deck in the waning hours of sunshine.

Playing cards in the evening after dinner. 

This was my fourth or fifth trip to the Lick Creek yurts over the last 10 years. The yurts are owned and operated by Payette Powder Guides. McCall skier, river guide and kayaker Marty Rood worked with the Payette National Forest to obtain a special use permit to provide guided backcountry ski trips and avalanche courses at Lick Creek. It sure is a great amenity to enjoy in the winter months! Marty also allows people to rent the yurts if they've gone with a guide before at Lick Creek and have at least a Level 1 avalanche certification. That's what we did.

As I've written before, yurt trips are a deluxe way to enjoy the mountains in the winter. Yurts typically are equipped with wood stoves to make things warm and cozy, bunks for sleeping, double-burner cook stoves, lanterns, pots and pans, plates and silverware, etc., everything you need to cook up a big feast. Marty also has a propane BBQ outside on the deck, a very nice touch. He even has fold up deck chairs available if they weather is nice.

Jim Young apres ski 

At Lick Creek, there's two yurts -- one of them is the cook yurt with a larger wood stove and cook stuff, and the second yurt is for extra sleeping space with a smaller wood stove. For our group of 8 people, half slept in the cook yurt, and half slept in the other one. There's also a very nice sauna building to enjoy after a day of sweating up and down the mountain. And of course, there's an outhouse and a pee tree.

The yurts are located at the top of Lick Creek Summit (elevation 6,700 feet), about 12.5 miles from the east side of McCall. You either pay $800 for a roundtrip snowcat ride to the yurts and back to town, or you can go in by snowmobile, if a bunch of the people in your party own or have access to 'biles. We did the snowcat route this time, with my old Tamarack friend Gregg Lawley at the helm. It takes about 2 hours to get to the yurts.

The snowcat provides several big benefits. You don't have to climb multiple miles with a heavy pack to reach the yurt, like you do at most yurts in Idaho. You can bring coolers full of food and drink, another benefit. No restrictions on bringing extra clothes to stay warm. So all of that is pretty deluxe! Our friend Jim Pace brought a two-up snowmobile to the yurts, just in case we might need it for an emergency, or to access more ski terrain nearby.

One of the big highlights for Wendy and me, along with most of our group, was to farm an area called "The Burn Line," above the yurts. The Burn Line was full of fabulous untracked snow. We skied it in the afternoon of Day 2 and a full day on Day 3, picking a new virgin line each run, while enjoying clear skies, almost no wind, and temperatures close to 30 degrees. Just about perfect!

Getting ready to take the snowcat into the yurts with Gregg Lawley.
L-R, Mike Erlebach, Deb Glazer, Mack Lyons, Steve, Chris Reino and Wendy.

On Day 3, Jim Pace went over to the north ridge of Beaver Dam Peak with Mack Lyons and Mike Erlebach of McCall to ski a chute or the bowl below the ridge. As they skinned up to the serrated ridge on the shoulder of the mountain, Erlebach said it was pretty obvious that the skiing would be marginal -- everything was breakable crust and windblown. But they thoroughly enjoyed the adventure.

"There's great opportunities for adventure skiing up there," Lyons says. "That was fun!"

I highly recommend booking some nights at the Lick Creek yurts with a group of your ski buddies, if you haven't done so already!

We've been blessed with a great winter so far with regular new doses of powder every week ... I hope you are getting out and getting your share of turns and grins in the *pow*!
- SS

Mike skiing the breakable crust below Beaver Dam Peak. 

Weather forecast calls for big *pow* in Central Idaho this weekend; 24-36'' expected

Should be tons of fresh *pow* this weekend. Go get it! (Courtesy Brundage Mountain) 

Hi all,

Well, it's been warm and rainy this week, but now the temperatures are beginning to cool down -- just in time to lay down a fresh layer of powder snow for happy skiers this weekend. Indeed, Christmas is coming early for the powder hounds!

Scott Dorval on KIVI-TV has been tracking the storms and predicting 6-12 inches of new snow from the storms on Thursday, more snow Friday and Saturday, and then 10-18 inches on Saturday night and Sunday. Are you getting excited yet? I am! That's 20-37 inches of new snow forecast from Thursday - Sunday. Woo hoo!

The most snow is forecast for Brundage, Tamarack Resort and Bogus Basin. Sun Valley is supposed to get some new snow, but not more than a couple of inches a day. I heard they had 4 inches of new just this morning.

Brundage will be in full operation on Friday, with all chairs running and 100 percent of the terrain open. Tamarack is opening the whole mountain for the first time on Friday, so there will be lots of fresh snow to ski there. It's not clear what slopes will be open specifically, so check their web site for updates. Sun Valley has been open since Thanksgiving It offers top-to-bottom groomed runs that are guaranteed to burn your quads because the slopes are SO long ... more than 3,000 verts!

Personally, I'm going to head up to McCall because I think there will be the most powder there, and I have a place to stay at our Cozy Cabin in McCall. Look for early-season lodging deals in McCall and Sun Valley. You can pick up stay-and-ski packages for great prices! Sometimes you have to pick up the phone to get the best deals ... especially in McCall.

I'm not sure if Bogus Basin will be open this weekend or not. There is no indication on their web site. I couldn't get an answer on the phone this afternoon. So maybe there will be an announcement on Friday ...

If you're interested in going backcountry skiing this weekend, I'd be cautious about that. Check on avalanche conditions before you go ...

The Idaho City Park n' Ski Areas should be fine for snowshoeing this weekend. No grooming is happening yet, so the xc skiing would be marginal, especially after all the rain mid-week. Monitor the snow conditions line for more information: 208-514-2423.
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I've been contacted by quite a few folks who want to buy my outdoor books for Christmas gifts, and they'd like to get their books signed. So, I have set up a special book-signing event on Saturday, Dec. 19th, beginning at 11 a.m. at the Capital City Market Annex in Vista Village. There will be live music and wine-tasting going on at the same time.

I'll have my outdoor guidebooks with me, and I also will have plenty of copies of "Idaho Microbes: How tiny single-celled organisms can harm, or save, our world."

Idaho Microbes is a brand new 268-page full-color book that features 10 chapters, or "eco-adventures," as my editor puts it, taking readers on a virtual journey to learn about a particular big-picture environmental or human health issue, and then learn about how the magical powers of microbes are helping solve the issue or make it worse. The whole project was a really fun learning experience for me.

In the case of the beer chapter, yeast is the magical ingredient that leads to the unique taste of a beer, among other things. In a chapter on "Guzzling Crude," naturally occurring microbes consume an oil spill below a Nampa gas station. In the chapter on white pine blister-rust, I show how the exotic fungus is combining with mountain pine beetles to kill off our whitebark pine trees in the rooftops of the mountains of Idaho. Fortunately, there are solutions to save our whitebark pines.

Anyway, the book is proving to be very popular so far! Idaho Microbes retails for $29.95. It's available at Rediscovered Books, the Boise State bookstore, Discovery Center of Idaho, and SteveStuebner.com,  
-- SS

Grant Targhee, the snow magnet, is the place to be right now; great destination for the holidays

Monday was a powder day at Grand Targhee. That's Quinn between the cars. 

Waiting for the patrol to drop the rope at 9 a.m. Everyone was excited. 

Mountain map ... click to enlarge

Hi all,

If you've been thinking about planning a ski vacation for the holidays, Grand Targhee is a sure bet right now, with plenty of snow (67-inch base) and some excellent ski-and-stay lodging deals. The rooms are filling up quickly, though, so you should act fast.

My son, Quinn, and I skied Targhee on Monday. We were in Idaho Falls for a hockey tournament over the previous weekend, and decided to play hooky. Six inches of snow had fallen the day before, and 12 inches were forecast for Monday. We were psyched for a big powder day.

We stayed at Targhee the night before in the Teewinot lodge, and I had time to take a nice long hot tub before dinner. There were a bunch of folks soaking in the spacious outdoor tub, and they were all psyched about the ski day on Sunday. One woman was there from Denver, and she had gone cat skiing for the day.

Deep powder! 

"Best ski day of my life," she said. The snow had been knee- to waist-deep in the backcountry surrounding Targhee, and the *pow* was nice and light. She nailed it. "It's nice to be able to ski here cuz there's hardly any snow in Colorado."

Other folks in the tub were from Minnesota and Wisconsin, and several others were from Colorado as well. They had done their Internet research, and Targhee was -- and still is -- the place to be.

Quinn and I were ready to go when the patrol dropped the rope for the Sacajawea lift, which serves Peaked Mountain. High winds were forecast for Monday, so we figured that area might be a little more out of the wind than the main Dreamcatcher lift, which goes to the top of Fred's Mountain. Turns out, Dreamcatcher never opened Monday because of high winds, so EVERYONE went to Sacajawea and the new powder got skied up pretty darn quick, even on a Monday!

Nevertheless, we took the Dreamweaver run down the ridge, and then drop into Quiver, a black-diamond glade skiing area, and found fresh pockets of powder for several hours. By noon, Peaked had been carved up pretty good. I wished we had been able to stay for several more days ... I bet Tuesday was phenomenal once they opened the other lifts.

On a clear day, the views from the top of Grand Targhee are totally spectacular.

I've been a big fan of Grand Targhee for decades. I remember years when the snowpack was thin in Idaho and the region, and Targhee always seemed to have the most snow. It's located near the Continental Divide, and when the storms circulate into the Northern Rockies, Targhee seems to be  ideally situated in a zone where they get hit with a ton of snow, one wave after the next. The base area is at 7,800 feet (which is 200 feet higher than the summit of Bogus Basin), so that means that Targhee will get snow even when the snow level is at 7,000 feet, like it was earlier this month. Average annual snowfall is 500+ inches -- that's over 41 feet!

Here are a link to a YouTube video of skiing/riding at Targhee.

It's also a great place to ski for a powder hound. The slopes are mostly wide open, with a little grooming here and there, and tons of tree-skiing everywhere. With a continuous vertical drop of 2,176 feet, it'll make your legs burn. Targhee added a lift on Peaked Mountain a number of years ago, so that really adds to the terrain as well. Before that lift was built, I used to skin up Peaked on my tele skis and ski untouched powder after the slopes got carved up.

Targhee also has 15 kilometers of groomed cross-country trails immediately adjacent to the base area, an outdoor pool and hot tub, on-mountain ski-in ski-out lodging and dining, snowcat skiing and a tubing hill. Basically all of the amenities are there for families or adults.

Right now, the best lodging deals include:

• Stay four nights or more, and you ski free at a rate of $55 per person per night. 
• Stay three nights and get the 4th night free. 
• Combination snowcat trips and lodging specials are available through the holidays and in January, there are some screaming-good deals available.  

How to get there: Grand Targhee is located near Driggs, Idaho. Quickest way to get there from Boise is to take I-84 to Idaho Falls, U.S. 26 to Swan Valley, ID 31 to Victor, and ID 33 to Driggs. It takes about 5.5 to 6 hours to get there, depending on road conditions and how fast you drive. 

Last weekend, a number of my friends headed over to Sun Valley to take advantage ski-and-stay deals for $79 per day. That was smart because those lodging deals end tomorrow (Dec. 20), and rates go up for the Christmas holiday. Still, Sun Valley also has good snow coverage with 55 inches on top and 36 inches at mid-mountain. They have opened Seattle Ridge as well.

Brundage Mountain has 71 inches at the summit, so they have excellent snowpack. I'm sure a lot of people will be heading to McCall for the holidays. Tamarack is reporting 16-61 inches of snow. They've got some great lodging specials going on right now. Glad to hear Bogus Basin will open Friday. I recommend taking your rock skis.

Have fun! I'll be doing another blog this week on last-minute Christmas gift ideas for outdoorsy guys and women.  
- SS

Find plenty of virgin powder, solitude at Tamarack Resort in Central Idaho near McCall

The only ski tracks I saw that day were my own ...

Hi all,

I went back to Tamarack Resort for the first time in a couple of years on Saturday. It was a busy day ... the upper parking lot was full, and it was hard to find an open table in the Canoe Grill during lunchtime. But even so, it was amazingly easy to find big fields of virgin powder in all of my favorite off-trail locations. In my view, that's a big reason to go there.

Here's a short video that I put together on Saturday.

As most people know by now, the Tamarack homeowners banded together to raise enough funds for the bankrupt resort to operate this winter. Tamarack is open Thursday - Sunday and most holidays. Operating hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Because Tamarack is closed Monday-Wednesday each week, that means there is great potential for any new snow to pile up until skiers and snowboarders show up on Thursday to shred it. And generally, there aren't enough skiers around on Thursday to actually consume the powder, compared to how quickly powder gets shredded at Bogus Basin or Brundage (usually in the space of 1.5 hours it's carved up).

So see what you can do about arranging a trip to Tamarack on a Thursday and enjoy the solitude and big fields of unskied powder. Yeah, baby!

Tamarack also offers discounts as an incentive for people to visit. Every Thursday and Friday, you can buy one lift ticket at the regular price, and get a second one for your family or friend at half price. Full price for a lift ticket is $46/day, so your second ticket would cost $23. Tamarack's lift price compares to $48 at Bogus and $55 at Brundage.

The only downsides are that the Wildwood ski lift is closed, so you can't ski that chair unless you brought your climbing skins, and Tamarack is not providing day care services for young children.

If you like skiing powder and off-trail stuff, be sure to check out the off-trail skiing on the south and north sides of the Tamarack Summit. Something I learned while working at Tamarack is that some of the best skiing is out of bounds. There are several open glades to the south of the resort and Lone Tree Mountain, a 20-minute walk to the south, offers a ton powder skiing on the northeast side of the mountain. Here's a video from that area.

Remember: You'll need climbing skins, an avalanche beacon, avalanche probe and shovel if you venture into the backcountry.

To the north of the Tamarack boundary off the summit, you can drop into Wildwood Bowl, a nice and steep powder shot that leads into the old Wildwood chairlift area. Count on some time hoofing back to the resort area from there, but on a good powder day, it might be worth it.

Another benefit of skiing at Tamarack is they have the Summit Chair, which services the top 1,000 vertical feet of the mountain. That means if temperatures are warm in the lower part of the mountain, or if it's raining down low -- as it was everywhere last weekend -- it's going to be snowing up high. So you can ski the upper third of the mountain and stay out of the rain. That can be a big plus.

The other thing I enjoy about Tamarack is the long top-to-bottom runs with 2,800 feet of vertical drop. You can take off from the top and ski Bliss or Serenity top to bottom. I especially enjoy skiing on Bliss, which was cut fairly narrow in width, and it has clumps of trees that you can slalom around on your way down the hill. Again, because of the lack of crowds, you can really cruise those runs at high speed and see if you can make it top to bottom non-stop.

While you're in the 'hood, consider visiting Gold Fork Hot Springs near Donnelly to soothe your ski legs, and check out one of several cool eateries in McCall, such as the Salmon River Brewery, the new Sushi Bar, or Wraptor, a healthy lunch alternative with soups, wraps and great cookies. West Mountain Gear & Grind is a great place to stop for coffee in Donnelly, and they have recreation gear and tune-up equipment in the shop as well.

Have fun!

- SS