A small green yurt came into view, smoke drifting lightly from a chimney, 15 minutes past the Smith and Morehouse Reservoir on a snowmobile. It was straight out of a storybook, surrounded by snow and white aspens, on the banks of a little stream, mountains all around. And inside? A wood center-dining table adorned by an elaborate charcuterie board — arranged heaps of sliced meats, dips, triangle cuts of cheese, nuts, grapes, marinated olives and beans and peppers, crackers, arugula and chocolate chunks. This is what it’s like to arrive at an Inspired Summit Adventures yurt after a day of backcountry adventure, said the guiding company’s founder, Shaun Raskin Deutschlander. She founded the company in 2012 and began guiding groups into the backcountry under her business in 2014 after completing the two-year permit requirements.And now, a decade later, she’s launching her next dream project for the guiding company: the first and only four-season backcountry hut system in Utah’s Uinta Mountains.Ice skaters carve the frozen reservoir near the Smith and Morehouse Yurt. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordIncreasing access to the backcountryFor Deutschlander, a self-described hippy at heart, a hut system is one way to meet the demand for outdoor exploration while still being environmental stewards, a way many states already have established.“If we look statistically from state to state … we have the least amount of backcountry huts of any state in the Intermountain West,” Deutschlander said. “Then when you start layering over the population density that exists so close to our mountains, we are so off the back of this opportunity to explore deeper into our mountains.”So she came up with the proposal for what is now called the Western Uinta Hut System, a series of five yurts to be set up strategically through the Uintas.“When I put the proposal together, I really just wanted to show that it’s not about exploiting the natural environment. It’s actually about opening up exploration for those who maybe otherwise would feel limited and unable to explore deeper into all of our public lands,” she said.Access to public lands is key, she said. “We all pay tax dollars for this. This is one of our country’s greatest legacies, is national forest and public lands.”The plan was finally OK’d after a long investigation into the proposed yurt sites, ensuring those areas were the correct zone for the type of recreation Deutschlander had in mind. The ologists came out, she joked: biologists, hydrologists, botanists, archeologists, at one point 24 different specialists, all making sure the proposal was aligned with the protections established for the forest.“As somebody who cares about this environment, this is a really, really thorough investigation, to the point where every square acre of our public lands is actually prescribed from the forest plan,” Deutschlander said.Accessing the yurt is easiest by snowmobile, which is provided by Inspired Summit Adventures. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordHow the U.S. Forest Service caresThe forest plan, or the Land and Resource Management Plan, is written by a team of planners, resource managers, collaborators and policy specialists assembled by the U.S. Forest Service for each protected forest in the country. This team will gather public information and analyze data to prepare a draft and then final document. Once written, the Forest Service will oversee and maintain the dictations in the plan.  These plans, written and updated every 20 to 25 years, are made up of different management prescriptions, identifying a resource emphasis and limits on use for a particular area of the land, said Daniel P. Jauregui, the acting natural resource staff officer for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. “It’s a public involvement, and it’s identification of ‘how would we designate a particular chunk of land?’” Jauregui said. “(For example), you have a wilderness objective, and then you might have areas that are designated for wildlife or for riparian habitat. … So as we start to look at working with Shaun (with Inspired Summit Adventures) in locations, there’s different areas out there that sometimes allow for new recreational development.”They evaluate for impacts to the land, which is where the specialists come in. In the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache, archeologists and botanists are two primary teams they send out, Jauregui said, looking for sensitive plant species or possible Native American artifacts.The hut was built a few months ago and is now able to accommodate backcountry skiers and hikers. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record“A lot of what we see out on the ground doesn’t make sense to us, but an archeologist will look at it and say, ‘Well, this is this,’” he said. “Plants are a little bit more difficult because they only flower two or three weeks out of the year, some of them, and … sometimes we don’t survey during the right time.”Soil scientists and hydrologists are also sent to assess how increased traffic in an area might impact the soil and critical waterways, Jauregui said. Each specialist will go out and report their findings, with a recommendation for or against the proposed project. All of this effort is motivated by the goal of maintaining the natural environment and preventing irrevocable impact.“We want to be able to come in and provide something for the general public, to be able to utilize their forest but also make sure that we’re not negatively impacting that resource,” Jauregui said. “One of the big fears that we have is where we get some of these noxious weeds, or invasive weeds. … They have the ability to change the whole entire system because they take it over, they dominate it, and then they don’t let anything else really establish in there.”The hope for the forest plan is that it’s written with enough flexibility to adjust as needed in the 20-25 years during its implementation, but also that the plan is specific enough that it protects essential resources so they’re not damaged or exploited, said Jauregui.For the area, they’re still using the plans written in 2003, two separate documents crafted before the Uinta National Forest merged with the Wasatch-Cache National Forest in 2007. They’re about ready for an update, Jauregui said, a process that can span years as public input and specialists’ reports are weighed.“If it’s working, there’s not a lot of modifications. But … we’ve run into unexpected fire seasons, where the fire season now is lasting all the way until October, November. That’s a change condition that we probably should look at, and start looking at some of our watersheds and say, ‘Well, maybe where we we might not have treated something 20 years ago, maybe it’s time for us to look at a different kind of management approach,'” Jauregui said.A map showing the Western Uinta Hut System explains where huts are located and potential for future huts. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordA dream made realityInspired Summit Adventures, based in Park City, already had the Castle Peak Yurt, which they’d purchased and rebuilt in 2021, a mile off the Mirror Lake Highway. Then in October, they got the green light for the spot that would become the Smith and Morehouse Yurt, completed earlier this month. The other three — Big Elk, Ramona and Slate Creek yurts — may have slight adjustments to the proposed locations, but they’re effectively “coming soon.” Their goal is to complete the entire five-yurt system by 2027, and once completed, it will open up 100,000 acres of skiable terrain, Deutschlander said. “So 10 Park City Mountains-plus could fit into this terrain,” she said.Each hut is located in places with multi-faceted uses and will be connected by roughly 10 miles.The Smith and Morehouse Yurt is designed to be their more adaptive option, Deutschlander said, with road access and proximity to the reservoir for water sports.The Castle Peak Yurt is more geared for the mountain biking or motorized community, she said, with South Summit Trails Foundations’ goals being to expand a biking trail system in the nearby terrain.With the two yurts now in use for the 2024-25 winter season, Inspired Summit Adventures is able to offer a guided and catered, or self-guided, hut-to-hut experience for their clients, with a team to transport heavy gear between the two yurts while clients ski the 10 miles of ridgeline between them.Each hut will be equipped with a small kitchen and three-burner propane stove, a wood-burning oven for heating and cooking, as well as bunk beds to sleep up to 10 adults. Warm lighting, copper and blue art pieces and colorful rugs all help make the space feel inviting and add a touch of character.“If you can’t tell, this has been a dream for a really long time,” Deutschlander said, her voice hoarse from talking. “It’s really fun to actually get to be living it and to be expressing it to people.” With salt-and-pepper hair falling wildly over her shoulders, a hot toddy held in one hand as she reminisces about pooping in a bag and skiing the nearby Narnia, a backcountry tree run of 2,500 vertical feet, it might be hard to imagine this woman growing up in New York City. Shaun Raskin Deutschlander and Cindi Grant talk to guests before dinner at the newest Inspired Summit Adventures yurt. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordBut, she said, her family never doubted this path. “At the age of 8, my mom gave me the nickname ‘The West Waiting to Happen,’” Deutschlander said with a laugh. At 16, instead of getting a car like her other friends, she got a mountain bike. While living in Manhattan had its fun, as soon as she graduated from high school she packed up for University of Colorado Boulder and never looked back.She first got into backcountry skiing in Colorado.“It was just about you being out in the mountains, making some turns in powder. And I think my passion about the Uinta mountain range in specific, is it feels so nostalgic. It’s a place that has continued to hold that kind of aesthetic or experience about being in the backcountry. A lot of these peaks aren’t named, and there is no ski run atlas except for the ones that we have, and I don’t share it with the world because I don’t want it to turn into a tick-list type of thing,” she said. “You go out, you explore, you get where your legs can get you, you ski what the avalanche condition and snow conditions allow you to ski, you high five and you come home.”Her team at Inspired Summit Adventures shares the same feelings about the outdoors — and for protecting the spaces where they guide.“The whole vibe within the organization is this friends who get to actually work together and hold each other accountable because, at the end of the day, we all have similar goals,” Deutschlander said.The group’s director of operations, Cindi Grant, is a longtime friend and fellow guide with Deutschlander. They met while guiding at Park City’s White Pine Touring. The two said the process of establishing the Western Uinta Hut System, especially with the most recent Smith and Morehouse Yurt, has brought them back to the terrain where they began guiding as Inspired Summit Adventures.“The really fun thing about this yurt in particular is that this terrain was our flagship,” Deutschlander said. “Now that this next chapter is starting here, it feels so full circle and appropriate, like this is where we get born — if I can get so cheesy.” For more about Inspired Summit Adventures and the plans for the Western Uinta Hut System, visit inspiredsummit.com/western-uinta-huts. The Castle Peak and Smith and Morehouse yurts are available for bookings on their website, too.The post Local guiding company’s new backcountry yurt system to open 100,000 acres of skiable terrain appeared first on Park Record.