The Cold Winter Yurt Trip

with Confluences
February 4, 2007

PhD’s Brave the Frozen Tundra of Maine…and Nearly Die, once again...

Four PhDs at the Tyler Brook Yurt

Chronicle by Matt; (at least 98%...)

It began as another great notion of a winter yurting adventure. As always, Tom lead the pack with ideas and options for a Winter outdoors adventure, as we planned to go to the Frost Mountain Yurts in Brownfield Maine. In order to make the trip more exciting, Charlie, who had only 6 months ago had his second knee replacement surgery planned a new and supposedly exciting activity of “bagging a confluence or two” along the way. (For an explanation of what the hell that is, Click HERE)
This struck some of the PhD’s as something short of excitement, but as always, we caved in to the hyper-enthusiasm of our older PhD colleague and agreed to entertain this as a worthy adventure to add to the trip. A close call came on the Friday afternoon before departure when Charlie called to say he’d been in a hospital all day in excruciating pain because of a kidney stone attack. He was worried about a recurrence and put us on notice that he might have to back out. This was particularly discouraging to the PhD’s because one of the other members, who will go unnamed, but it wasn’t Matt, Dave or Tom, was suffering from chronic drug therapy problems, which resulted in his “legs cramping up”. He had tried multiple modifications, some with and some without advice from a medical professional, and finally decided that he was not adequately fit for the adventure. After much coaxing and offering of light-duty options for the trip, we finally conceded that he wasn’t going to come even if we drove him to the door of the heated yurt, propped him up in an easy chair in front of a battery-powered TV and handed him a remote for the weekend.

We started out uncharacteristically late in the morning, taking two cars – Charlie’s falling apart Jeep (more on this later) and Tom’s hopelessly Vermontian all-wheel drive car. The first stop was for wine and spirits, no big surprise there. As we began to search for the site of our first “conflugerence” at 43N 71W, it became apparent that Charlie was a little unsure about how to begin the search. While looking at his GPS (and not the road) he concluded that we needed to drive into some kind of industrial business parking lot and tromp into the woods. As with most of these adventures, we followed the leader like a pack of fools. This naïve trusting behavior would almost lead to our collective demise the next day.Charlie held his magical GPS, reading off numbers that none of us could fathom. He kept talking in longitudes, latitudes and minutes and none of us had a clue as to what the final aim was. After braving the cold woods, we found ourselves walking through frozen swamps on our quest. Along the way, we saw multiple piles of moose crap, and bear scratchings. We all felt great excitement at the site of this excrement. After many more readings from the GPS, we finally and excitedly found the point of conflugerence. Jubilation ensued. Picture taking, whoops of joy and posing at the site were the GPS said 0 was the method of celebration. We left behind 11 cents in the “Geocache” box that was at the site and examined the contents of the trinkets left by the others who had been here before us.

As we headed away from our first conflugerence bagging, Charlie was elated and the rest of us were starving. Charlie once again led us back to the car whilst checking on our coordinates along the way. The rest of us simply followed the footprints made moments before to find our way back to the cars.
After a lunch where it took “forever” to get a sub, we headed out on the road 60 miles north to the next conflugerence point, which was not too far from our yurt site. This point was located at 44N 71W, only barely off of route 302, down a hill and then back up a hill just behind someone’s barn. Not nearly as exciting and no moose crap to be found anywhere. Not too scenic either as this seemed to be the spot where the landowner would pitch his unwanted household junk. We did the happy dance at the site and ambled back to the car. Charlie was once again more excited than he should have been, but encouraged by the two points being “bagged” in one day.

On arriving at the Frost Mountain Yurt site, it was apparent that the Yurt proprietors had their act together. We loaded up some sleds and hauled out stuff out to the yurt. A really nice, but short walk into the woods later, we came upon the yurt. It was well appointed in every way and remarkable clean. The temperature monitoring started at that point. We found it to be about 0 degrees F inside and about 4 below outside.

Food preparations were underway shortly after arrival. Dave’s outstanding spinach dip on toast points were passed around as was a bag of crunchy corn things that make your fingers orange. This was followed by a way-too-spicy squid appetizer prepared by Matt (way too much chili pepper). Charlie changed into his yurting attire, looking like a disheveled Hugh Heffner in his bathrobe and slippers. Dinner was Thai pork stew over rice noodles, which everyone seemed to think hit the spot on this cold winter night. The usual stoking of the woodstove by our “Incendiary Guy”, Dave helped to get the yurt to a balmy 50-something degrees by about 8 pm. We hit the sack.

Around 3 in the morning, Charlie decided that after relieving himself by filling his own personal toilet, he should stoke the fire. On hearing him start to open the front of the woodstove, it became readily apparent that this was not something he should be doing. A flaming log fell out of the stove and lit up the inside of the yurt like it was noon. Dave came to the rescue but not before the electronic smoke alarm started to scream Fire!!!! We decided that Charlie was no longer allowed to touch anything having to do with the woodstove. Charlie declared that nearly setting us on fire wasn’t his fault and tried to blame the log.

It was decided in the morning that we should have an early morning assault on the 1200+ foot mountain before allowing ourselves to have breakfast at a local greasy spoon. We donned our gear, put on the layer upon layer of garments needed to fight off the –4 degree weather and headed out the door. We climbed steadily with Charlie showing amazing effort and stamina, this being his first major activity after the knee replacement of a just a few short months ago. Once again, he read from his GPS as every foot in altitude was climbed. He forced us to stop every few feet to look at the path being traced on the screen, exclaiming with giddy excitement that this was “the best thing I ever bought”. At the top, we found a clearing with views back into mountains that even Tom didn’t recognize (a first). We headed back down, again stopping every once in a while to see our trek being drawn out on the screen of the GPS.
On reaching the cars, Charlie once again said a prayer and turned the key to his old and broken-down car. It started with some grumbling, but started nonetheless. We found a local (and I do mean very local) breakfast place downtown in Brownfield that served just the kind of greasy-spoon food we’d been looking for. The two eldest members of our group once again complained that the food took forever to arrive. Impatient old folks, I guess.
Following our breakfast, we headed further north to Great Glen Trails recreation site in Pinkham Notch for some cross-country skiing and snowshoe activities. On arrival, it was clear that the sensible people had stayed home - we were the only ones inquiring about what the outdoor activity options were. After much deliberation, Charlie and Matt decided that snowshoeing would be great and Dave and Tom determined that the windswept frozen track was just right for cross country skiing. It was 4 degrees below zero with a 20 mile-an-hour wind. When we returned to the desk where we had asked about activities earlier, the person at the desk looked at us immediately when we said we decided on outdoor activities and said “really, are you kidding? You’re actually going out there today?”.

Thus, we went to get our gear, paid the fees and started out into the brutally cold great outdoors. Charlie and I stomped through the snow, shielding our faces from the bitter winds, an exciting and invigorating adventure ahead of us. We reached the warming hut in no time at all. It was a yurt; bigger than the one at Frost Mountain. Charlie said he wanted to do some more hiking. Matt was impressed. We headed up the trail and hiked through the hills and trees of a well groomed path. Snowshoes, we decided, were just for show on this day – the tracks were well groomed and smoothed over. When we reached the higher elevation warming hut, we found Dave and Tom resting comfortably in rocking chairs, baking in the 50-degree heat. We decided that Borb would have liked this spot. We headed back down the trails and found our way back to the Great Glen headquarters crossing the windy snowfields in the last hundred yards – nearly died there! Back at the lodge, we found a perfect spot in front of the fireplace to sit on a couch – a very “Borbian” spot to be. He would’ve loved it, we all agreed.

Talk of forging on to the next conflugerence point far further north ensued. Tom was adamant that we go for it and not worry about the distance or expected sub-sub zero temperatures or other dangers ahead. Charlie was ecstatic over the possibility of “scoring” 3 confugerances in a 24-hour period, so we hopped into the cars and pressed on. The roads were icy and treacherous. When we finally found the off-road road that we needed to travel, we abandoned Tom’s car and piled into Charlie’s for the 5 or so mile trek into the woods on what appeared to be a not well-traveled road. As we drove onward, the temperature began to plunge as we started to lose sunlight. The road was unforgiving, but we reached the last leg – Raspberry Lane – the narrow down hill entrance to the final conflugerence of the trip!

As we took the left down the road, it quickly became clear that this road hadn’t been well traveled as evidenced by the softer snow. About 50 yards into it, the car started to dig in and progress was hampered. We all decided that we needed to abandon the road and go back to where we came from. We then looked for a place to turn around, rather than further attempting to back-up the road, which had been a huge problem in our first 15 or so attempts. As the sun dipped lower into the winter sky, our attempt to get the old Jeep moving in the right direction appeared to be in vain. Momentary glimpses of fear and panic ran across the group’s collective face, with sharp direction coming from Dave and Tom that we need to call someone right away to avoid freezing to death in the treacherous grip of the looming night’s terrible cold. As we all turned on our cell phones and realized that there was no signal to be found anywhere, any hopes that we had of a swift rescue by tow truck were dashed upon the frozen ground. It was quickly decided that Tom and Dave would brave the cold (-11 Fahrenheit) and start to head towards a truck that had been parked alongside the road about a mile from where we were now hopelessly stuck, hoping it’s owner would be around to help us out. After hurried agreements that they would return if unsuccessful, they went off into the distance, trudging headlong into the fading light of the day. Charlie and Matt agreed that we would try to turn the Jeep around, allowing a forward charge of the vehicle up the icy hill. Matt walked down the hill looking for firmer shoulders along the way. He found none, but it was decided that given our predicament, all attempts would be made, even if futile. Charlie began the slow process of turning the car around, small turn by small turn, until at last, the vehicle was headed in the right direction for an assault on the hill. We agreed that it was a magnificent, if not tedious execution of the 312 point turn. After some initial struggles with the jeep sliding into the softer snow that was the road’s shoulder, Charlie finally broke free of the slipping and barreled headlong up the hill, swerving from side to side, threatening loss of control. He completed the climb with the car going nearly sideways, but jumped out of the car triumphant and trembling with delight. Matt strode up the hill towards the car, jumped in and the two started back down the road, now in search for Dave and Tom.

Minutes passed and Matt and Charlie assessed that “surely they couldn’t have gone this far in the time it took us to do the 312-point turn”! About a mile later, we found them trodding along, mustaches frozen and expressions thankful and relieved. After they were able to move their mouths (i.e., after they defrosted), we told them the tale of the 312-point turn. On the long drive back to the yurt, each of us celebrating our new lease on life, we decided to stop for dinner. The meal wasn’t nearly as good as Tom’s menu had promised to be and indeed was cold to some, who made sure that they communicated his displeasure at this finding.

Back at the yurt, the group was met with a cold abode, having to start the fire from scratch with the second priority being to rescue the red wine from the cold. The group fell into their respective sleeping bags, exhausted from the day’s events. The morning brought a fine breakfast meal by Tom, with Matt focused on making a half-gallon of coffee for himself, and another full pot for his compatriots. We packed up and headed out. The trip home was full of talk of what we should have done differently and what we would have done if the 312-pount turn hadn’t worked. Another fine adventure in the books for the PhD’s and another cornucopia of opportunity for awards to be given on another day.