Professional snowboarder Mike Basich spent five years building a tiny stone cabin on his own 40-acre patch of the Sierra Nevada, about 10 miles outside Truckee, California. He calls the property Area-241, and it comes with something few homes anywhere can claim: a private chairlift.
Mike Basich, snowboarder and builder
Basich has been a professional snowboarder for around two decades, and Make magazine calls him the "DIY guru of the snowboarding community." Before GoPro cameras were common, he adapted ordinary photography equipment so he could film himself riding. He went on to become one of GoPro's most prolific sponsored athletes and rides for Flow.
That do-it-yourself habit runs through the whole Area-241 project. Seeker profiled the cabin in 2015 in its Going Off Grid series, and the film below gives a full tour of the house and land.
Area-241: a 225-square-foot stone cabin
The cabin covers about 225 square feet, roughly 21 square metres, and has a five-sided, pentagon plan. According to EcoWatch, Basich and his friends moved about 175 tons of mountain rock by hand to build it, and he based the proportions on the golden ratio. Make reports that the granite, pine and Douglas fir all came from the property itself, where around 80 percent of the ground is granite.
Inside, the space is organised around a few essentials:
- Heat and cooking: a single wood-burning stove and fireplace.
- Power: solar panels.
- Water: snowmelt, according to Make.
- Bathroom: there is no indoor toilet; Basich uses an outhouse.
- Light and view: large windows that open the small room to the forest and peaks.
A private chairlift and a wood-fired hot tub
The best feature sits outside. Basich built a one-person chairlift with a 600-foot vertical rise, so he can ride his own slopes and lap them without hiking back up. Tiny House Talk reports that the lift took him and his friends about eight months to build. A wood-fired hot tub completes the set-up for long winter days.
The cabin sits about three miles from the nearest plowed winter road. In a Sierra winter, that makes the last stretch home a trip over snow, so supplies need planning well in advance.
Watch the cabin tour
The Seeker film walks through the stone walls, the stove, the windows and the chairlift, and lets Basich explain why he chose a small home on a big piece of mountain.
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