Yurt Camping

[Anonymous]

Planning some overnight Yurt/snowshoe trips in Utah and Wyoming this winter.

Never been to one, but supposedly they have a woodstove, propane stove, propane lantern, and bunk beds (no linens).

What essentials (besides normal hiking essentials) do I need to bring?

With the woodstove, any ideas on how warm it will get in there? What rating of sleeping bag would be sufficent?

I figure its possible to go pretty light if I don't have to bring my house and kitchen with me and it'll be a good wway to get my girlfriend to enjoy winter camping. Thoughts?

[Andy Berner]

Im looking to do a short 2 nighter in the Porcupine mountains in U.P. of Michigan. Sounds like they supply about the same items also.

I don't think you need to bring anything special. I would probably end up bringing more weight. Cards, alcohol, good food.

I would guess you could get by with a 30 degree bag/quilt. Although if something happened and you got stuck outside in a storm you might want something for back up.

Anyways I'm interested on some more input and thoughts on this also.

[Paul Davis]

All: Check your local weather records for record maximum and minimum temperatures and pack accordingly.

Typically, both wall tents and yurts can be made very warm if fitted with a metal woodstove—typically these are not airtight, so at night there is then a wild temperature swing down to near outside temperatures, unless someone gets up to feed the stove. Most packable woodstoves won't burn for much longer than 3 hours—some as short as 1 hour.

I would always pack at least a winter foam 'sitz pad' for breaks on the trail, and heavens forfend, an unplanned overnight. Ditto for bag or winter survival clothing.

A headlamp is good for unplanned nightime arrivals, reading, and finding the outhouse at night. A pee bottle can save a lot of bother too…

[Eric Blumensaadt]

As with foreplaces and cabin stoves, tent stoves are most efficient when the firebox is fed with OUTSIDE AIR through a pipe. Plains Indians made a small covered trench from just outside the tepee to the central hearth to get the same efect.

This setup keeps the stove or fireplace from drawing already heated air from the tent/cabin/yurt and sending it up the chimney, only to be replaced with cold air sucked in through gaps and cracks or right throught the fabric of the tent or yurt.

"Banking" a fire by putting wood on & then covering it with ashes to limit the O2 for combustion keeps a fire burning low all night. As a kid in the '50s it was my job to go to the basement at night, put several shovels of coal in the furnace then properly bank the fire with a layer of ashes from the ash box below the firebox. So I DO know how to bank a fire – wood or coal.

(Yeah, COAL furnaces in homes! No wonder we have global warming.)

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