Harriman State Park Yurt

Harriman State Park has two yurts. We recently stayed in the Sygnet Yurt. We are going to put up quite a few posts here to help you understand "the rest of the story" about staying in a Harriman yurt. You can find out a lot about the yurts from the Official Harriman State Park website. However, there are a lot of details that are either not expressed or poorly described. It is our hope information presented on this blog will help first-time yurt users have a much better experience. Our Yurt Posts are a "work in progress" so they may be frequently edited, rearranged or otherwise amended.

In this post, we will cover the financial and a few other basics as of January-February 2010. Technically, the yurts rent for $45 a night. However, you have to add Idaho State Sales Tax AND a $10 reservation fee. Two nights then becomes a net of $106 or $53 a night. A one-night cost of a yurt is slightly more expensive because the reservation fee isn't split over two nights (or longer).

You also need to be well aware of other added costs. Your daily park admission is covered in the cost of the yurt. HOWEVER, your trail user fee is NOT covered during the winter season. It is still $4 per person per day. A couple such as ourselves staying two nights owes the Park an additional $16 plus tax for the trail user fee.
In our case, we decided to buy the $35 winter season pass. With tax it comes to $37 and change. Our two night stay at the yurt was an out-of-pocket of $143.

We do plan on going back to Harriman several more times this winter so the season pass will be a "wash."

(NOTE: Non-winter users of the yurt do not have to worry about the trails fee--it is only charged in the winter to help offset the cost of grooming the trails.)

Whatever the cost of the yurt, it is a great gift to the people. It is well worth the price. Note that the financial turmoil roiling the waters of State Parks could well bring about a significant sea change in the pricing of the yurts and other rentals as well. Chances are the daily price of the yurts will take a quantum leap before the 2010-2011 winter season begins.

Here are some observations about yurt availability. Since the existence of the yurts is widely known and appreciated, there is a large number of people who wish to rent the yurts. Typically these people rent them on weekend days. Typically the same people reserve them months in advance. Unless you can look far into the future to arrange your schedule to rent a yurt, you are out of luck for any given weekend day.

Typically, there are a few weekdays available at any given time. Go onto the park website, and type in a date that you may wish to rent. Then click on "Check Availability." This will allow you to scroll through the calendar to see when dates might be open.

If it is less than 48 hours prior to the time of availability, you will have to call the park to reserve a yurt. Yes, you will be charged the $10 reservation fee, even though the park has the option of waiving this fee in such a case.

Prior to your use of a yurt, you are required to fill out some paperwork at Park Headquarters.  It's basically a rental agreement so they have some recourse in case a bad actor destroys the place. 

One other caveat you should know--you cannot occupy a yurt on your first day even one minute prior to 3 pm, even if the yurt was vacant the night before. This is a very illogical policy but it is what it is. We support Parks rules & regulations 150% so we aren't about to complain about this policy, even if it doesn't make any sense. Luckily, checkout time is a reasonable 12 noon. Just keep this in mind when making your travel schedule.

If you plan on enjoying the trails for a few hours prior to your occupancy of the yurt, you will have a fine day. However, if you show up hours in advance and then realize there are NO exceptions to the 3 pm rule, you might not have as good a time.
Be forewarned.

A word about the blog posts below: You can click on any of the tiny photos to see a much larger version.

Harriman Yurt Parking, Sleds & Transport

For those of you who are accustomed to parking in the Day Use areas near Park Headquarters, you'll need to look elsewhere to leave your vehicle for your yurt visit.

There is a designated parking area for overnight winter visitors. It is located near the Park Maintenance shops. Bear left past Park Headquarters and then bear right at the "Y". The road then curves to the left and you will see two large buildings and a very large open area. As you enter this area, look left and you will see the overnight visitor parking. It is signed and pretty obvious, actually. There's plenty of legroom to spread out your stuff while rigging your sleds, etc.

We'd guess park staff keeps this area plowed. However, on our trip, they hadn't yet had a chance to plow the vacant parking spots. Luckily, we brought a shovel so we could clear areas beside our vehicle. We also brought two small folding camp chairs to make rigging a lot more comfortable.

You will need to display your park pass on the dashboard of your vehicle. We assume it's 100% safe here but, as a rule, we don't leave valuables in our vehicle.

The park rents sleds for $5 a day. They are good, solid sleds and well worth the rental price.

We chose to buy our own sleds. Having our own sleds allowed us to rig them before the trip and know exactly what was going to fit and how it was going to fit. Our "Bed Sled," the small of the two sleds, was totally rigged and ready to go before we left home. The other larger sled was also rigged at home using 3 plastic tubs and a plastic pickle bucket. In this way, we knew we could rig and lash down the gear in minutes with no "head scratching" or gear jamming.

We also had to hip straps made at the Idaho Falls Leather Shop on Park Avenue. Each strap is a double layer of 2-inch webbing with a fixed "D" ring at the center of the back. The hip straps fit perfectly below our backpacks and allowed an even distribution of the weight.

In order to know how much weight would be comfortable, we took each sled to a city park and filled each with various concrete blocks. We pretty much knew the weight limitations of each sled before we started messing around with our gear.

It's quite a short walk (or ski) over to the yurts from the parking lot. Two snowmobile trails leave the maintenance area and join the main road about 125 yards from the turn into the yurt area. In our case, we figured 10-15 minutes one-way for the gear shuttle. Without a sled, it's possible to do a round tirp to the vehicle in a mere 15 minutes on snowshoes.

Since we had never been to the yurts before, we did snowshoe over to understand the trail system before we sledded in our gear. If there's been a new snowfall, park staff will run a snowmobile over to the yurt so that you won't have to be breaking trail with your gear sled(s).

Wood Heat

One of the first things you'll want to do upon your arrival at your yurt is build a fire in the woodstove. There are quite a few things you need to know about the yurt's heating system. First, we were surprised to see that no one has cleaned out the ash in a really long time. There was a thick layer of encrusted ash on the bottom of the fire box. For someone who loves to build fires, this was perplexing. We simply has assumed that the park would clean out the ash in the woodstove. This routine maintenance task is beyond the capability of casual overnight users. besides that, it could be downright dangerous, too, for both the visitor doing the cleaner and the integrity of the yurt itself. Next time, we plan on asking the park to clean the fire box before our arrival. That's a very fair request in light of the overnight fees.

There are two wood boxes in the yurt. One is a large traditional woodbox and the other is a plastic tub filled with a variety of kindling. The "rules" here state that you can use all the wood you wish but you must fill up the wood boxes for the next person before your departure. Fair enough. The person(s) who stayed in the yurt before us really didn't have a handle on how to split either firewood or kindling. Neither box was filled with anything usable for our needs. Luckily, I had anticipated this possibility and brought my own axe. I was quickly able to split up some suitable kindling and also prepare the proper size firewood to fit the little woodstove.

As you might imagine, the woodstove is a small one. Even if someone foolishly overfilled the firebox, the inherent size of the woodstove would be self-limiting in terms of just how hot it could get. We are in favor of small fires that do not get the woodstove overly hot. It's really easy to choke off oxygen to a small fire. Big fires can present problems and we long ago stopped building them.

The park provides a little metal can with some wood shavings that have been soaked in a petrochemical. We think it's kerosene. You're supposed to use the plastic spoon to place a small amount below your kindling. We are much more comfortable with generic Wal-Mart charcoal lighting fluid. You can easily control the placement of the fluid on the kindling and have a nice smallish fire going rather quickly. We're somewhat skeptical of the use of the soaked shavings on live coals. The flashpoint of charcoal lighter is proven safe in a ba-zillion circumstances. So, we left the shavings alone and used our "tried & true" methodology.

We'd strongly suggest starting a very small kindling fire. Don't add your heat logs until the kindling has burned about half way down. Add perhaps two smallish quarter split logs and let them ignite and burn for awhile before adding any more fuel. Bring you heat up slowly.

Here's a few thigns we wish we would have thought of. If you have welder's gloves--take them! If not, take a pair of stout leather palm gloves. If you have some fire tools, and don't mind towing the extra weight, take them, too. You can easily get a vicious 3rd degree burn with this style woodstove if you reach in to move a log. Be extraordinarily careful with this style of stove--it can really bite you!
The only fire poker available on our visit was a black-tipped pine branch. Frankly, it's not smart to use a flammable material as a fire poker. We'd much rather have a piece of iron as a fire poker.

When we're camping, we use a copper pipe that has had one end crimped as a blow pipe to help reignite a coal bed. We'd highly recommend one of these devices. You can bet we will have a pair of tongs, welder's gloves and our blow pipe on our next trip.

Also be aware that lodgepole pine is not a long burning wood. It burns quickly producing a fast, hot fire and then it dies down almost as quickly. You will need to be doing regular fire management with the lodgepole pieces. At night, if you wait too long, the inside temperature will drop into the 30's and then take 30-45 minutes to recover. We plan on taking a digital kitchen timer (no ticking sound) to helpwake us up at the appropriate intervals during the night. A regularly tended fire will yield an even and enjoyable temperature throughout your stay.

The woodshed is over behind the outhouse. You can't miss it. There is a heavy splitting maul inside the yurt to use for making small pieces from big pieces. If you are not accustomed to using a splitting maul, be caseful. These things can wreck havoc with your muscles and spinal system. Even though I am no novice when it comes to this device, I still managed to badly pull a muscle in the lower right side of my back. Next time, I will definitely take my back brace! It's a pretty fair amount of work to split the semi-green pine rounds. If you have any physical limitations, I'd suggest letting park staff know before you begin your overnight stay. I would think the ADA laws would require park staff to provide assistance proportional to your limitations.

we saw some visitors carrying their split wood back to their yurt by hand. Hum...wouldn't it be so much easier to use your sled(s)? It took only two sled loads to refill our wood box. As a favor to the next guests, I split down the rounds into perfectly sized stove wood. I also made some custom kindling for the plastic box. I think it's a nice gesture to slightly overfill the woodbox. The next visitor can tell when someone was only doing the minimum work to add wood to the box. In our case, most of the wood they split was still too big to even fit into the woodstove.

The little axe really made a BIG difference in the quality of our visit!

Sanitation & Water

Both yurts share a Cadillac vault toilet. This is the top of the line toilet--they simply don't get any better than this. The location of this facility is roughly half way between the two yurts. Since yurt users are the only people frequently this facility, it's in basically pristine condition. There is plenty of extra toilet paper and a broom to sweep out the place should you so desire.

Small signs at each yurt urge visitors to refrain from urinating in the snow. Nobody likes yellow snow so please heed the advice of the sign. If you think you're going to have trouble going to and from the toilet during the night hours, bring along a plastic pickle bucket for your liquid waste. We've been using such an arrangement for years and years. It helps keep all our campsites clean and fresh and sweet smelling.
All of our urine goes into the bucket and then into the vault toilet where it belongs.

We hauled in a 2.5 gallon container of water because no one told us that the water was "live" during the winter. Most parks shut down their water lines during winter so we wrongly assumed Harriman would do likewise. Nope. There's a "live" frost-free spigot near the Cygnet yurt and it works just fine, thank you.

We think it would probably be a good idea to double check with the park staff during extra cold weather to see if the line was still flowing. This is a real nice perk and will cut down greatly on our sled weight for our next trip.

Obviously, "pack it in, pack it out" is the order of the day at the yurts. Our trash fit nicely into our five gallon "P Bucket" upon our departure. On the next trip, we think we will bring a second bucket simply so that two days worth of trash will be out of sight and smell inside the second bucket. It's just a good common sense housekeeping detail.

Cooking & Lighting

The cooking setup in the yurt leaves a lot to be desired. This is the biggest weak link in the whole arrangement. Yes, a Coleman stove is provided. You are supposed to bring your own little green propane bottles. Here's the problem: all sorts of people are using this stove.

If you know anything at all about small camp stove, you know the weakest part of the stove is the threaded fitting into which you screw the propane bottle. Unless you are really careful and paying attention, it's all too easy to cross thread the bottle into the fitting. The fitting is made of soft metal and the threads on the bottles are a harder metal. This is not a good combination!

Luckily, we assumed that the threads on the stove fitting would be buggered up. We brought a roll of plumbers teflon tape. I feel pretty certain we would not have got a tight seal without the teflon tape. I was very paranoid about that situation for our whole trip. Everytime I lit the stove, I was half expecting to see big flames shooting out the junction of the bottle and the fitting. The first time we lit it, I had Susun stand by with the fire extinguisher in hand. There's really no way to know if the last visitor was ham-handed and impatient. It's a crap shoot. You might show up and have no stove because the bottle won't fit properly.

Our "workaround" for this potential situation will be to simply take our own stove along and keep it in the truck. If we find that we can't safely get the yurt stove working, we'll just go get our own stove. At least we'd have an option. Be sure to take some fresh matches!

Yes, there is a propane light in the yurt. It's what I would call an "area light." It will definitely provide a nice even light suitable for just about all indoor activities. Unless you take it off it's hanger, it's not a good reading light. Note that the lantern can be adjusted with a rope that's secured over by the wood box. We brought our own single mantle lantern and we're really glad we did. It's a great light for playing cribbage, reading, etc. It's not blindingly bright and it will use only about one canister of propane every two days.

Note that the park does provide spare mantle for the yurt lantern. That's a nice touch. If you've never put on a new mantle, you are in for a fun treat. Please DO attempt to burn in the new mantle outside the yurt. There's all kind of toxins in those mantles and the fumes are best kept outdoors.

I took a picture of some of the various lighting stuff we brought. Those small tea light candles in an IKEA glass holder really add a romantic touch to the yurt. They take up almost no space, weigh next to nothing and they are safe if used properly. We took our own fresh matches as well as two butane clickers. No worries about an ignition source. We also took two LED headlamps and two small LED flashlights. The teflon tape shows up in the photo. The other object is a digital humidity monitor and a min-max thermometer. It's nice to know your inside overnight low and your daily high. We had a 2nd thermometer inside the food box, too. It's been our experience that at least one headlamp or flashlight will get misplaced on any given two night trip. Hence, we bring four so we always have one available. Definitely bring at least one headlamp--it makes messing around with the fire at night SO much easier!

Another note about the stove. This particular Coleman stove is very difficult to simmer on a low flame. it's designed to blast out high heat and boil water in a hurry. We forgot our flame tender on this trip and that's not a mistake we will make again. Having a flame tender renders these aggressive stoves tame as a kitten and makes perking coffee or simmering a gumbo a piece of cake!

Bedding

Pretty much every Idaho State Park bought their futons from the same place. They are OK futons as far as they go but we've found the mattresses are a tad on the thin and bony side. We've used identical futons at Massacre Rocks and Lake Walcott State Park cabins. Hence we knew enough to bring our own sleeping pads to supplement the futon mattress. Our Bed Sled holds two sleeping bags, two pads and four pillows. That's enough bivvy to insure a great night's sleep.

If you're a couple planning a yurt trip, the bedding arrangement easily allows you to sleep together. However, it's a royal pain to crawl over one another when Nature calls in the middle of the night. Hence, we sleep in separate bunks and get a great night's sleep. The top bunk is a perfect "clutter stuffer."

Note that if you are planning on bringing other people along on a yurt trip that only ONE person can sleep in each top bunk. Don't ignore that rule or serious injuries could result to people below an overweighted top bunk. I doubt I'd even feel safe sleeping a heavy adult up there. Kids or lightweight adults would be OK. Big guys? Not so much.

Misc. Gear Logistics

There's quite a few comments we can make under this topic. The pictures above speak a lot, too. Let's start from the top left. We brought our small sled inside to be a container for the snowshoes. When the encrusted snow melted, it was contained in the sled. We could then dump the melted water outside without soaking the wood floor. As a courtesy and as just plain common sense, visitors should sweep up their snow off the floor into a dust pan before it melts. A little vigilence in that regard goes a long way.

There's the obligatory smoke detector and fire extinguisher inside the yurt. Be forewarned that the woodstove will almost immediately kick off the smoke detector. There was no way for us to override the sensitivity of the smoke detector so we were forced to remove the detector's battery. This is NOT a good idea. However, it was either remove the battery or listen to the squeal for our entire trip.

I really don't like the little pimpy fire extinguisher. I couldn't find a "service date" on it. It looked quite old. Typically, the smaller fire extinguishers don't perform well as they age. You can turn them upside down and tap gently on the bottom to free up some of the active ingredients. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if this extinguisher had a service tag on it and I'd feel even more comfortable if it was a decent size. You'd get maybe 30 seconds--a minute at most--out of this little toy.
That's not a very comforting thought should something go wrong inside the yurt.

Here's a photo of the handy dandy axe. It's an antique Tru Test I found at a thrift store in Challis for $3. It's not much of a looker but it wails on kindling and does a decent job of splitting half round into smaller pieces. A good hefty axe is hard to find these days. We highly recommend you bring one to the yurt. Fire management would have been a real hassle without this axe!

There's a a great boot dryer next to the woodstove. It made us smile to see it. Kudos to State Parks for including such a great touch in the yurt. It's SO much fun to put on warm socks and boots in the morning. This makes winter camping a pure joy and delight. Little things like that boot dryer are really special amenities and very much appreciated. Many Thanks to whoever decided to include the boot dryer!

Don't forget the reading material. It's all too easy to think "Gee, I already have too much stuff," and delete the reading material. These yurts are a fabulous place to enjoy the warmth of a wood fire and cozy up in a snuggly futon with a good magazine or a friendly book. You'll really kick yourself if you fail to include at least some token reading material. On our first trip, I decided to bring along the history of Island Park. I thought it was a fitting tribute to the heritage of the place--learn some history while hanging out in a yurt. The yurt is a true palace compared to the primitive log cabins of the Island Park Pioneers!

You don't need a cooler. A small plastic tub makes a great cooler. Simply cover it with snow outside. Voila, a cooler. Some people think they need a cooler to prevent things from freezing. Maybe yes, maybe no. We'd trade the convenience and light weight of a plastic tub over a bulky cooler any day. We had no trouble keeping our food items at the correct temperature during our two night visit.

Beware Frozen Door

We felt we should devote a complete post to this topic. You can get frozen INTO the yurt. Yes, it's true--it happened to us. Ice melting from the top of the yurt collected at the bottom of the door and formed a substantial ice dam. There was absolutely no way to open the door to get out of the yurt. We had to use our cell phone to call for help from park headquarters.

At first, we thought the bottom of the door had frozen to the threshold. So, we painstakingly used a small steak knife to saw our way between the threshold and the door. But the door still wouldn't open.

Luckily, we had our cell phone. Luckily, we also had the park number. Luckily, we well, they answered the phone. When you have to make a trip to the outhouse in the morning, being frozen inside a yurt really isn't as funny and hilarious as it initially sounds.

Luckily, the park sent out a speeding snowmobile. Anna Lee brought along an antique ice breaker that dates from The Railroad Ranch Days. She freed us in minutes and we were able to go do our business. Then she returned and really cleaned up the entry area so it wouldn't happen again.

In our case, we did have one of the park staff's cell phone numbers, too. We didn't have to use it but it was comforting to know we had it. Obviously, we're not at liberty to give out someone's cell phone number on this blog. However, you might want to consider visiting this potential issue with park staff when you arrive for your visit. They may see fit to give you a cell phone number in case such a dire situation takes place after hours or on a weekday morning when no one is on duty at HQ.

We know we would have been able to summon help because we had two phone numbers.
I really wonder what would have happened to someone who didn't have a cell phone or didn't have the numbers to call. Hum...it could have been real interesting in such a situation!

Summary

The Harriman Yurts are awesome and wonderful. Sure, there are some "issues," so to speak, but the bottom line is that these two little structures are magical and delightful in every way. Yes, they will cost you some bucks to enjoy them but it's like that credit card ad--the one where they go through the cost of everything and then they list something and say, "Priceless." That's the way it is with the yurts.
No matter what the yurts cost, they are a priceless experience--at least from our point of view.

We're going back for one more two night trip this season. We hope to bring along all the stuff we wish we would have thought about the last time. I'm sure we will make some additional notes on this blog about the yurts. As noted in the very first post, we plan to make numerous edits and additions to these posts over the next few weeks.

We hope that our comments will prove to be useful for you. Happy Yurting!

Welcome to Harriman State Park

I'd like to take just a few moments here to say this:  "WE LOVE HARRIMAN!"  It's the greatest state park we have ever known anywhere in any state.  There's no other park quite like Harriman any place in the United States.  Yes, there are all sorts of spectacular state and national parks.  There are parks with soaring mountains, crashing waterfalls, giant trees and more.  There's only ONE Harriman and we are totally, completely in love with the place.  We will tell you a thousand reasons why we love this place. We just want to make one point loud and clear--WE LOVE HARRIMAN!