For the past several years (except 2020) a group of friends and I have been doing a backcountry ski hut trip in the Sierra Nevada. There are four backcountry huts which were built in the ~1950s and are run by the Sierra Club. The huts are very basic, no running water, no heat besides a wood burning stove, no beds (you sleep on the upstairs wood floor), and a couple huts have solar panels to power lights for a few hours.
My wife and I spent the last two nights at the Bradley Hut with 8 friends. We were super lucky to receive 12/16 inches of fresh snow prior to arriving, which made the ski conditions amazing. Even though it got down to 5 degrees at night. 🥶
To get to a hut you must snowshoe or ski 5-8 miles into the mountains. The huts provide amazing access to the surrounding wilderness and, most notably, incredible backcountry skiing.
What makes these hut trips so special is the amount of discomfort you must put yourself through (you need to carry in all your food and supplies) just to sleep in a cold hut on the hardwood floor. But, you are rewarded with full disconnectivity, great conversations and gorgeous mountains. Which I guess it takes full disconnectivity to actually reach connectivity with friends, yourself, and nature. :)
