Hut-to-Hut Ski Trip

Every trip is customized to your group and the conditions, but here's how a guided and catered hut to hut usually unfolds. The minimum stay is 3 nights and 4 days, which gives you time to settle into the altitude, the conditions, and the easy daily rhythm of yurt life.

You'll meet your guides at headquarters in the Park City area for a quick gear check, then head to the trailhead together. They load your gear onto snowmobiles and toboggans and you ride in together, about 6 miles and 2,000 vertical feet. No snowmobile experience required. Every hut to hut starts at one of the high-elevation yurts, Castle Peak or Little Elk.

The standard trip spends two days and nights at Castle Peak, at 9,800 feet, skiing open slopes, glades and bowls by day, with the wood-burning barrel sauna and guide-prepared dinners by night.

Day 3 is the big ski across: an 8-mile, 5,000-vertical-foot journey down to the Smith & Morehouse Yurt. It's a long day, 6 to 8 hours, with at least three laps climbing 2,500 feet on skins and descending twice that, through some of the most remote mountains in the region, with slopes no one has ever skied still out there. It's exciting and it takes commitment: there are no bail-out points, and the only emergency exit is a helicopter. You leave your bags for the transfer team, and when you arrive your gear and the group's food are waiting, followed by apres and dinner to celebrate the day.

Day 4 is an optional morning of skiing around Smith & Morehouse, then a pack out and back to HQ in Pinebrook around 4:30pm.

Who it's for: hut-to-hut groups need previous backcountry skiing experience, good general fitness, and the ability to climb 3,000 vertical feet on skins in a day. Groups are up to six people who have skied the backcountry together and move efficiently up and down hill in all conditions. Not there yet? The guided and catered hut trip is a fantastic way to get the experience first.