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Early morning sunlight glints off the new powder crystals as we snowmobile up Lake Fork Road in McCall, Idaho. It’s early April, yet a cold storm has pounded the Salmon River Mountains with nearly two feet of “freshies,” and our goal is to haul our gear 12 miles into the Like Creek Yurts, a stylish pair of yurts tucked into a hillside in Idaho’s West-Central Mountains, also called affectionately “Idaho’s Andes.”

We have come to ski the untracked backcountry, making long tours in the mountains to find the safest terrain, and spending evenings on the big deck eating French cheeses and tapenade with water crackers and drinking regional chardonnays. Lick Creek offers sprawling panoramic views of the surrounding peaks, including the impressive Beaver Dam Peak, looming at more than 9000 feet high in the distance.

Since the yurts—comfortable Mongolian-style huts that sleep 11, with skylights, high ceilings, and wide-berth bunks—are a full day ski in, snowmobiles (or snow cat) are the desired transport. You can haul all your gear, coolers of great food, and après ski beverages on sleds instead of your back, allowing more time and energy for hiking and skiing up and down the gorgeous glades, bowls, burned timber stands and chutes that define the dramatic area.

We pull in, unload, don daypacks and avalanche gear and start skinning up the hills just behind the yurts, where there are descents for every level of skier or snowboarder within a 40-minute hike up to “Skier’s Saddle.” From the saddle, we ski perfect snow, taking the leisurely timbered glade called “Girlfriends” that ends in a swooping steep shot at the bottom of an 800-foot ski.

Another hike up to ski the more northerly aspects called “Surprise” and “North Corner.” As sunset sends salmon-colored light across the valley, we tromp the flat road-trail back to the hut, alone in our mountain thoughts, the hills all around us windblown swirls of cornices and dragon shapes and Ansel Adams landscapes.

In the evenings our friend, chef Sean, dazzles us one night with Thai curry shrimp and sticky rice, the next night with veal bockwurst, fingerling potatoes and marinated red cabbage. We relax in the sauna, and then roll in the freezing champagne powder to energize. Steam, roll, repeat. We talk about the wolverine we saw earlier, marveling at its speed over the snow, and the local fox that slinks around, sneaking off with dropped crackers.

The last day is cloudless and electric blue, and we tour across the valley, to an unnamed peak just north of the Beaver Dam. We scamper up a narrow ridge shaped like a Stegosaurus’s back, then ski the wide open bowls below, spilling out onto quilts of snow flecked with charred and skeletal timber. We savor a picnic lunch in a wind-sheltered depression, tour the west basin beyond, then, exhausted and smiling we head for the cozy Lick Creek Yurts once more, our home away from home in the middle of Idaho’s Andes.

Buddy Levy is the author of, most recently, Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs.

Need a map of Idaho? Stop by your local AAA office to pick up a free one.