Government Mineral Springs Guard Station

February 2023

The fireplace is propane. When we called the ranger station they told us it was wood burning, I can confirm that it is definitely propane. There’s still wood stocked at the cabin, but there’s literally no place to burn wood.

Getting There

Driving there is pretty straightforward, it’s at the end of the road. Make sure you follow the instructions on where to park and get your sno park permit. The gravel road is closed and impassable in winter and you’ll need to walk ½ mile to the cabin. The walk is fairly easy as it’s on a snow covered road and is fairly flat, however you should bring skis or snowshoes. We could see footprints where somebody had attempted to walk and many of their steps plunged down into the snow 12 inches or more. You could also use a snowmobile to get to and from the cabin with your stuff. We used an expedition sled with snowshoes and it worked just fine. Finding the cabin is easy, it’s right on the gravel road.

The paths around the cabin, to the stream to get water, from the road to the cabin and from the cabin to the latrine can get quite icy so bring yak traks to help with traction. We forgot ours but used a ski pole to help with traction. There’s a good snow shovel so we reinforced and created snow stairs to help with getting around the outside of the cabin.

Getting in

Once you get the key out of the lock box use it to open the front door to the living room. The dining room door doesn’t unlock or open at all that we could figure out. Turn the key in the lock clockwise kind of hard, then hold it over while you push down on the door latch to unlock and open the door at the same time. The front door cannot be left unlocked, it will lock when it closes so either immediately go to the back door and unlock it, or leave the key outside where you can get it if you lock yourself out. The back door can be left unlocked so you don’t need to worry about locking yourself out at night when you go to use the latrine.

There is only one key so for the love of God don’t lose it.

Propane

The cabin will smell like propane because the cabin uses propane for lights, fireplace, refrigerator, and stove. It won’t hurt you.

The fireplace is easy to start, just to the right is a thermostat, turn it up to turn on the fireplace. If the pilot light has gone out there are instructions on how to relight it in the fireplace manual. The propane fireplace is new, maybe a year old…? It has the fake log insert so it’s actually very pretty. The only thing that is missing is the pop and crackle of a wood fire, but it’s nice to not have to fiddle around with keeping a fire lit and the mess the wood creates. There’s a box beside the fireplace which still has wood stocked in it, but there’s no use for the wood since you cannot burn it in the fireplace any more.

The lights are easy to light, there’s two in the living room, one in the dining room, one in the kitchen and one by the back door. There are instructions on how to light them by the one in the kitchen. The propane lamps are somewhat dim but create a nice warm glow that’s sufficient to illuminate the room, but you’ll want to bring your own light source that you can move around to where you need it.

The heater in the dining room does not appear to work. My husband is an electrical engineer and took a good look at it and the instructions and was unable to get the pilot light lit. There were written comments about excessive propane smell from it in the past, so after trying to get it started we gave up and switched off the propane to it.. Until the forest service fixes or replaces it, I suggest not using it as it just seems to leak propane into the cabin without creating any heat.

There was a bic lighter and matches on the mantel, but it’s not a bad idea to bring your own. The pilot light in the oven in the kitchen wouldn’t stay lit, so we had to relight it every time. Between the kitchen oven and the fireplace we were able to make the cabin toasty warm.