Last weekend, SheJumps held it's third gathering of all the girls willing to ski/board and sleep outdoors—in the snow. We held our 3rd annual winter camping trip that included a long tour (6.5 miles) into the Uintah Wilderness, Utah, skiing/snowboarding, snow pit digging, snow cave building, lots of yummy food, and yurt/tent camping. The following was taken from our wonderful "jumper" Pip Hunt's blog (www.adventuresofpip.com). She starts off with a little quote from the park ranger who came up to us after we skied out: "I've never seen so many girls up here before," he said. "All you ladies and no male leadership?" Well Pip can take it from here...

Yes, that’s right Mr. park ranger. 15 ladies, one yurt, one tent, and one snow cave. Two days in the backcountry on the SheJumps Third Annual Winter Camping Trip. No Male leadership.

And no, we didn’t need it. Thank you for asking.

Last Friday, 15 of us packed our packs full of winter camping goodies and trekked 6.5 miles up to Castle Peak Yurt in the Uinta mountains. A few of us had attended previous winter camping trips with SheJumps but for many, it was their introduction to winter camping. Camping in a yurt, with meals prepared by Liz Sherry, who is in the midst of culinary school, is not exactly roughing it. But after last weekend in Bishop, I was just find with some luxury camping.

The hike into the yurt took us about 5.5 hours, but we were moving at a leisurely pace, keeping the group more or less together, and stopping to enjoy lunch 3.2 miles in. The badass award definitely goes to Lindsay Van, whose feet started to bleed a couple miles in, and continued to hike to the yurt in her approach shoes. Where many men would have turned around, this woman kept on chugging along. After everybody got settled in, and Re Wikstrom, Nat Segal and I had set up my Thor II tent, we sat down to eat a delicious dinner of pulled pork and portabello mushroom tacos and tuck in for the night.

The first night, Nat, Hannah Whitney, Emily Cook and I slept in my tent. It was definitely the warmest night I’ve ever spent winter camping, and I quickly abandoned my hot water bottle that I usually cling to all night long.

After eating our fill of potatoes, scrambled eggs, and bacon, we geared up the next morning to ski nearby Castle Peak and dig some snow pits for snow analysis. The warm sun from the day before had been replaced with grapple, fog, and a frozen layer of snow underfoot. Since the ski conditions were far from perfect, we spent most of the day digging; digging snow pits, snow bowling, snow angels, and digging a snow cave. The snow cave ended up being so addictive (what kid doesn’t like building tunnels in the snow?) that some of us were digging away long past dinner time. It was only Liz’s threatening to put dinner away that brought us inside to eat. Alas, all of the digging tuckered us out, and the anticipate dance party didn’t happen. Yet dance party or no dance party, it was still one hell of a weekend with the girls!

By the way, Nat Segal also put up a great write-up from her perspective at: http://natsegal.blogspot.com.

VIEW GALLERY HERE!