Matt and I have been talking about hiking in the Porkies for more than a year and haven’t gotten around to it until now.  This trip has spent a long time on the shelf – waiting to come to fruition and finally its time has come. Last week we broke down and rented 3 nights of cabin/yurts in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness at the prompting of our friend Scott. It was a bit of a mess to plan because the cabins can be rented up to 1 year in advance and are almost always full, so we had to reserve cabins that other people had recently cancelled. After a few calls to the park we settled on staying at the Lost Creek Yurt on December 30th (today), the Little Union River Yurt on December 31st, and the Union River Cabin on the first day of the new year. For the first two days our friend Aaron, who is visiting from Texas, is going to come along and our friend Scott is going to meet us at the Little Union River Yurt tomorrow.

We got rolling a little later than expected this morning because we spent forever running errands, buying a ridiculous amount of food, and fueling up the truck. We finally hit the road at a little after 1 pm. The drive to the Porkies is short, just a little over an hour, and in no time we were collecting our cabin keys and strapping on our snowshoes. The Lost Creek Yurt, where we are “camped” tonight was about a 7 mile hike by snowshoe trail. The hike was mostly uphill because, while the Porkies aren’t really mountains the way most people think of mountains, they are definitely formidable hills. The first 4 or 5 miles of the hike were pleasant, invigorating, and just what I needed. The last couple miles, however, got a bit tiresome because it began to get dark and the temperature dropped (not to mention we were carrying steaks, butter, breakfast sausages, bagels, veggies, and all sorts of other things I wouldn’t normally bring backpacking) and Aaron began to regret pulling a sled. For these last couple miles Matt seemed convinced that we were “almost there” every time we got to the top of a hill, but we never were. When we finally reached the yurt we were all ready for dinner so we fired up the woodstove and got down to cooking. For dinner we ate venison steaks (slightly freezer burned) with mushrooms and onions, a side of black beans and rice, and all sorts of chocolate and cookies for dessert. We passed the remainder of the evening playing cards by the light of some candles we hauled out here with us (also not normal backpacking gear).

I can’t remeber the last time I was this relaxed. This is what vacations are supposed to be like. Aside from getting to the next yurt, we have nothing we need to do. I thought yurts and cabins might feel like a cop-out in comparison to tent camping, but it doesn’t. It feels comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, winter camping is always fun, or at least a challenge, but it’s never very comfortable or relaxing, never vacation-y. I guess this trip is kind of a vacations from being hardcore as much as it is a vacation from work, school, and home.

You can see Aaron’s post about the trip on his blog HERE.