As my heart rate steadied, I took in my surroundings and felt a bit disoriented. I’m used to looking from the Wasatch Range toward the Uinta Mountains—but on this clear and breezy March day, I was standing atop the Uintas’ 10,000-foot crest, gazing back toward more familiar territory: Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons and Park City.
I’d made it to this remote high point on backcountry skis, powered by my own effort—but not my own navigation. That came courtesy of Inspired Summit Adventures (ISA), a Park City-based guide company. As I caught my breath, I took in the snow-frosted trees and untouched slopes around me. Though the 2024–25 winter had started slowly, snowfall rebounded to slightly above average across Northern Utah, helping drive more than 6.5 million visits to the state’s 15 ski resorts—the third-busiest season ever, according to Ski Utah. Yet on this sunny day in the Uintas, looking from that untouched, alpine wilderness into the bustling Wasatch, I stood with just five companions—and no one else in sight.
This scene occurred on day three of ISA’s newest offering: a four-day guided hut-to-hut backcountry ski adventure using the Western Uinta Hut System. ISA’s owner and head guide, Shaun Deutschlander, began dreaming about a series of backcountry huts in Utah’s east-west trending Uinta Range soon after moving to Utah to begin her guiding career in the early 2000s. And then when she launched ISA over a decade ago, she began working in earnest toward making that dream a reality.
“I was inspired by the immersive experiences I’ve had on hut skiing trips in Canada,” Deutschlander says.
While backcountry yurts are not unheard of in Utah (see “For Do It Yourselfers”), before the Western Uinta Hut system launched last winter, groups of huts designed for multiday, guided backcountry skiing, snowboarding, hiking and biking were not connected. Deutschlander’s vision spans a series of five huts, all within 6 or so miles of one another, tucked deep into the Uintas’ backcountry, connected by 96 miles of existing hiking and mountain biking trails in the summer and 100,000 acres of backcountry skiing and riding routes and runs in the winter. She purchased and rebuilt the existing Castle Peak Yurt in 2021, and then added the Smith and Morehouse Yurt, tucked into the pines along the creek at the namesake reservoir’s south end, in late 2024. The system’s three remaining yurts are in development with a completion target set for late fall 2027.
Like most of ISA’s adventures, my Uintas hut-to-hut trip began at the outfit’s Pinebrook neighborhood headquarters. Following a gear check and some excited chatter, mostly about the fantastic snow conditions, our group of six loaded our personal gear and food into a trailer with the snowmobiles we’d use over the next four days. We got on the road around 9 a.m. and arrived at the trailhead 30 minutes later. There, Deutschlander led a game of Tetris to balance all our gear and food in the snowmobile toboggans we used to transport all our stuff to the trip’s first stop: Castle Peak Yurt, our home-away-from-home for the next two nights.
A pair of Salt Lake City ski buddies cobbled together the original Castle Peak yurt just off its namesake 10,234-foot summit back in the early aughts. I never visited the yurt’s first iteration, but I will say that the yurt Deutschlander and her staff erected where it once stood may have spoiled me for all others.
The pleasant aroma of freshly cut wood greeted us as we walked through a breezeway and over the yurt’s threshold. Three comfy futon bunks, strewn with coordinating throw pillows, line the far side of the room, with one Rumpl Puffy blanket hung from each bunk frame. The space is also furnished with a well-outfitted kitchen, framed by metal art Deutschlander commissioned to protect the yurt’s wall from the six-burner cooktop. A woodstove, topped with a pizza oven, is tucked in near the door. And, in the center of the room, an eight-person dining table and chairs are arranged over an Aztec-print rug.
Deutschlander gives us a quick tour of the yurt and surrounding area, pointing out the wood-fired sauna (yes!!), WAG (Waste Alleviating Gel) bag outhouse (ISA practices Leave No Trace principles, always, transporting out all waste generated on its guided trips); and a roped off area where we all took turns collecting snow to melt for drinking and cooking. Then we booted up, performed a beacon check and realized a major benefit of this guided and catered trip (after the fantastic guides and the skiing, of course): getting access to the snowmobiles we used to get into the yurt to get to the start of each of our ski tours.
Over the next 36 hours, we fall into a soul-rejuvenating pattern of ascending through snow-flocked pines and along wide-open ridgelines; fun, low-angle powder skiing; eating tasty food; and plenty of laughs. Early on the morning of day three, Deutschlander rushes into the yurt from the guide quarters, positively giddy with news: it had snowed a half foot overnight and the Utah Avalanche Center had issued a moderate-to-low avalanche risk forecast for the Western Uintas—in other words, perfecto conditions.
We quickly ate breakfast, packed our bags for the porters to take down to the Smith and Morehouse yurt, and suited up for the trip’s signature day: a 6-mile traverse up and down through some of the most spectacular mountain terrain I’ve ever seen, a landscape where we’d not see another person all day.
By early afternoon, we reach the 10,647-foot summit of Sunset Peak, the vantage point I described at the beginning of this story. From there came the highlight of the day: skiing a run Deutschlander named Chaise Lounge, a wide-open, long and perfectly pitched slope that would likely be rated intermediate if it were within a resort boundary. It felt like I was floating along a field of feathers as I skied its gloriously long fall line. At the bottom, I was greeted by hoots, hollers and lots of high-fives from the rest of the group.
The mood is downright festive when we slide into the Smith and Morehouse yurt a couple of hours later. The porters, who moved our bags and remaining food down from Castle Peak while we skied all day, have also left chips and salsa on the table inside the yurt, outfitted as a carbon copy of the higher yurt, minus the sauna. Beers, dinner and a dance party ensue, complete with a disco ball and colored wigs.
In the morning, the trip’s final day takes on a slower pace as we pack our gear for the last time before going for a short final tour into the surrounding hillsides. And then the time to head our separate ways comes way too soon. We exchange firm hugs, fueled by a bonding unique to spending days moving through the mountains together, and say our goodbyes.
As last winter became spring and then summer, I found myself daydreaming often about the Uintas’ jaw-dropping scenery, sweet solitude and how my face hurt from so much laughing with those I traveled there with … and coming up with a way to make that trip happen all over again this winter.
