Cabin Fever

One Friday afternoon almost 30 years ago, during the winter of 1978, I left Santa Fe right after work and drove north toward Colorado. My friend Rocky went with me. We threw a load of ski gear, winter clothes, and packs into the back of my '67 Chevy pickup truck and headed into the gloaming.

We were in our twenties. The trip was an impulsive one, the kind you take in that youthful era during which fear and loathing are vaguely attractive goals and driving back roads through a snowstorm with sketchy traction doesn't weigh overmuch on the decision-making process.

"I've heard about these mountain cabins up in the Collegiates," Rocky had said, a week earlier. "We need to go do some recon."

Far as I remember, that about summed up the pre-trip planning.

The drive was epic, the night black, the snow swirling, the roads treacherous. My blue truck beetled up the Rio Grande Valley, fish-tailed through the high, quiet forests of northern New Mexico, stuttered across the border near the Great Sand Dunes and on up the San Luis Valley. We were lucky to make Buena Vista at all, much less by midnight, when we woke the manager of a rundown motel and took a room.

In the morning, we discovered that Rocky had forgotten his snow pants. No problem, the storm had passed over and he had a comfortable, broken-in pair of blue jeans. Then we realized that he'd also forgotten ski poles. Who needs two ski poles, anyway? We'd share.

Around noon, fortified with a breakfast platter at the local café, we managed to coax the truck up the access road to the trailhead, shrug into our packs and head up the narrow alley in the forest, breaking through a foot of new powder. No skins, one pole each, leather boots, we might even have sported wood skis. Can't remember for sure, but it was back in the day when skis had "lignistone" edges and people didn't cheat with plastic boots and a bunch of expensive, sissy gear that takes all the fun out of the experience.

Fun like Rocky had after falling a few times and getting his jeans wet so that they froze into leg-irons. Fun like we both had flailing into tree wells and    trying to extricate ourselves with our single-pole system. Fun like, late in the day, when the light was going and there was still no cabin in sight.

"Gotta be here somewhere," Rocky said, pointing to the black square marked on the topo.

But we were young. Mortality was not on the radar, and sure enough, right about full dark, the first stars gleaming overhead and cold seeping in, the snow-buried cabin appeared, hunkered in a little clump of conifers at the base of an alpine bowl. Cut and split firewood on the porch, a bubbling spring just out the door, candles stuck in empty wine bottles, the obligatory cabin journal full of somewhat suspect entries, and the inevitable scatter of mouse turds on the counter tops. Perfect.

Rocky and I had an outstanding recon that weekend. We covered some ground. It was early in the telemark era, at least for us, and our avalanche knowledge was tenuous, so we only scratched the surface of open slopes above the cabin. But the days were brilliant, the terrain exquisite, and we had the whole shebang to ourselves.

What I remember best, though, is the cabin. Rather than having to endure the survival gauntlet of winter camping, shivering next to a sputtering camp stove and sleeping 12 hours a night with our boots bumping around with us in our sleeping bags, we had a cozy, warm, rustic base to operate out of. We played cards. We nipped at a bottle of whiskey. We hung Rocky's jeans off of a rafter to dry. We embellished our entry in the cabin journal. The whole deal seemed a bit too sweet to be true.

Like I said, it's been a while since that impulsive jaunt. Kind of amazing I can remember it at all. A lot has happened in the decades since. I now own a pretty good chunk of sissy winter gear myself. I've been married more than 20 years. I've got life insurance and snow tires. I have three children. I've settled in Montana. What hasn't changed is that backcountry cabins remain a big part of the winter equation. More than ever, in fact.

Somewhere in my 30s, winter camping started to lose its appeal. Yes, it's wonderful to be out in the quiet, muffled season, exploring backcountry, truly experiencing winter. It's the overnighting routine that gets onerous. I mean you have about six hours of good light between breaking camp and making camp. You carry gargantuan packs. Everything from boiling water to setting up the tent takes 10 times longer than it would in summer conditions. It tends to be bitter enough that once the stars come out, around 5:30, there's nothing much to do but go to bed, until roughly 9 the next morning when it finally gets light and warm enough to re-emerge. Some fun.

Midway through my third decade, it finally sunk in that the reward/effort balance sheet for winter camping didn't really add up. About then I reverted to day tours on skis and snowshoes, and revived the passion for cabin comforts which had begun so heroically over that long-ago weekend with Rocky in the mountains of central Colorado.

Okay, there was one more factor. I also began having children. Ever try winter camping with infants and toddlers? Backpacking with babies is rough enough. Winter camping? Forget it.

Which is precisely where backcountry cabins shine. It didn't take us long to figure out that if we wanted to get outside in the winter for more than a snowman-making stint, we'd best be checking into a cabin somewhere.

Marypat suggested it first.

"Let's celebrate winter solstice out of town this year," she said. "If I see another Christmas sale I'm going to puke." Or words to that effect.

Our winter solstice cabin tradition, which has now lasted more a decade, began with that statement. We rented a Forest Service cabin in a tributary valley off of the upper Yellowstone River. It was accessible by road. It had electricity, a refrigerator, a cook stove. Pretty cushy digs, all in all, and the price was right at $30 a night.

As with all such outings with children, the packing and organizing effort was massive, the amount of stuff staggering, the potential to forget rather-essential items large. It seems fitting that, over the years, we have continued the tradition of omissions Rocky and I instituted. One year we forgot all the snow pants. Another year we left the boots at home. Once we spaced out all the eating utensils.

No matter. The cabin is the focus. "Our cabin," the kids call each place we rent, within moments of opening the door. They scramble into the rafters, lift trap doors, make little nests on the bunk beds, read the journals. It takes a concerted effort to extricate the crew from the cozy confines and go in search of sledding hills, frozen creeks, weasel tracks.

We take luminarias to commemorate the shortest night of the year. A few early Christmas presents come along. We cook a feast, play Dominoes or Yahtzee. At some point, before bed, the cabin glowing with candle light, we troop outside in the brittle dark, tip our heads toward the star-stuffed sky and howl into the night. Pagans and proud.

As the kids have gotten older, we've got bolder about renting more remote and rustic cabins. For half a dozen years now we've taken advantage of one of the winter three-day weekends to ski, pulling sleds, four miles to a cabin on the fringe of Yellowstone Park. It's located in a weather belt where snow is always four or five feet deep on the level. The cabin gets buried like something out of a fairy tale.

The kids have found a nearby area of blowdown in the forest, huge Douglas fir tipped over, rootballs as big as sheds. They climb up the spokes of roots, a dozen feet high or more, and launch acrobatic leaps and flips into the bottomless drifts below. They dig snow caves, make ski-jump ramps, hollow out elaborate tunnel systems.

Sometimes, after dinner, we go skiing by moonlight through the aisles of trees, ambushing each other out of the eerie shadows. The jagged mountains loom like black cutouts against the sky. The fields of snow gleam with subdued light, undulating and luminous. At some point we stop, our breath rising into the cold, still air, and let the silence swoop in, deep as eternity.

Every time, on these excursions, this moment arrives when the stillness of the season strikes home, and the depth of the night sky, swarming with stars; a moment in which we sense the earth turning and appreciate the immensity of the enterprise we are such a humble part of. A crystalline moment of awe and reverance, humility and exuberance.

And under it all, the smug satisfaction of knowing that we don't have to return to a shelter of frosty nylon and huddle in down bags for 12 hours, but, instead, that our little cabin awaits, simmering with stove warmth, where another round of hot drinks will be in order, and another spirited game of Dominoes around the rough-hewn table, with the flickering glow of candles lighting our faces.

Writer Alan Kesselheim is the author of six critically acclaimed books, including Threading the Currents, Water and Sky, Going Inside, and Silhouette on a Wide Land.