“Wilderness Experienced” is our shared stories and musings about recent experiences in our nation’s Wildernesses. Stories can focus on the virtues of Wilderness, including the opportunity for solitude, discovery, spiritual renewal, physical challenge, wildlife viewing, and more, or things you found troubling, that just didn’t seem right in Wilderness and represent the challenges facing the National Wilderness Preservation System.

We suggest a length up to 750 words. Include one or two images from your trip, as well as an author photo. Wilderness Watch will review all submissions and reserves the right to decide which submissions get posted. Please send your story to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please do not submit travelogues or writing aimed at directing people to specific places in Wildernesses or trailheads.

 

Also, we encourage readers to engage the authors and other commenters through the comment feature. Please be respectful and thoughtful in your response, and focus your comments on the issues/experiences presented. Please refrain from personal attacks and harassment, using rude or disruptive language, providing misinformation, or promoting violence or illegal activities. We reserve the right to reject comments. Thank you for your cooperation and support.

 

By Michael Edwards

“The fine gravel made this hike feel a lot like walking through sand - not super fun for 7 miles. And not a whole lot to see, pretty mundane until you get to flat rock, which is kinda cool to explore, but not for that long of a hike.”

– Online reviewer bringing their own brand of shade
to the Oregon Badlands Wilderness

 

Michael EdwardsI hope the following paints a sunnier portrait of the desert. 

 

The Oregon Badlands Wilderness is a 29,000-acre protected area in the high desert administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The desert’s hardy flora roots itself into the land’s shield volcano, which came into being 80,000 years ago when a lava tube running underneath the ground sprung a leak. Lava oozing north, south, east, and west created the badlands.

The sandy, light colored soil that the raccoon prints are imbedded in comes from thousands of years of eroded lava. At various locations in the badlands, there are elevated volcanic rock formations—ships in the sagebrush sea—that allow for unobstructed views of the Cascade volcanoes to the west and the vast desert to the east. 

 

By Jim Peek

Jim Peek

I’ve seen quite a few cougars over the years, but the biggest one was in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho. 

 

My way to cool off from the spring semester at the University of Idaho was to borrow Maurice Hornocker’s two pack mules, saddle my horse, and have the agriculture school’s stock truckers take me to Selway Falls and drop me off. I would then ride the 50 or so miles to White Cap Creek. It was May, when the shrubs were in bloom and nobody else was in there. 

 

I usually checked with the Forest Service about whether the trail was avalanched shut or if it was open. When they invariably told me it was impassible, I always went regardless and never dropped a pack. 

 

By Kevin Proescholdt

Kevin

This fall, my wife Jean and I visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota. Though we had driven through the area on I-94 in the past, we had never explored the park, nor visited its designated Wildernesses. We had a wonderful time visiting and hiking in the park, and exploring the Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness.

 

We found that the National Park Service (NPS) itself does very little to highlight the Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness within the National Park, and it was very difficult to find information about the Wilderness from the NPS. That needs to change, but that situation also unfortunately reflects the NPS’s generally lackadaisical and cavalier attitude toward Wilderness across the nation.

 

By Shane Vlcek

Cathy

I spent most of my adulthood in the western states of Idaho, Montana, and Oregon. Experiencing the backcountry was always something I looked forward to. But finding the opportunity and time to explore those sacred Wilderness places where true freedom is no longer in front of the next step or beyond the next ridgeline had always been a chance experience rather than a lifestyle.

by Harriet Greene

 

Howie WolkeMy daughter and I drove south towards the turnoff, then seventeen miles on gravel to the trailhead. A pack trip was leaving and the wrangler, spitting a wad of tobacco, told us about “one of the best campsites” where we were headed. The trail climbed through a grove of aspens, stayed high on a sage-covered slope above Upper New Fork Lake, and we crossed into the Bridger Wilderness at 3.4 miles. Ah-h-h!

 

After a seven-mile climb into the steep New Fork Canyon and two tricky river crossings, we ascended to a meadow, exhausted and desperate for a site. Fording the river again to a heavily-used area with a lot of horse manure, probably the spot the wrangler had mentioned, we moved far enough away, pitched our tent and cooked dinner just as it started to drizzle. 

By Brett Haverstick

Phil KnightI was off work and at the trailhead by 6:00 p.m. I estimated that I had about three-and-a-half hours of daylight to hike the eight miles to Bass Lake on the Montana side of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. I wasn’t in the best backpacking shape, but I figured I could still knock out the miles and the 3,500 ft. elevation gain before it was completely dark. I hadn’t backpacked into the Selway—Bitterroot, my favorite Wilderness, since last autumn.

By Phil Knight

Phil KnightWhat good is designated wilderness? Are the Lee Metcalf or the Absaroka Beartooth “wasted lands” because people can’t just go do whatever they want there?

 

I am currently (temporarily) disabled from a fall and cannot walk unassisted. There will be no wilderness trips for me this summer.

By Michael Lipsky

CathyFor many years I had wanted to return to the Elysian Fields, an off-trail backcountry area of trackless meadows in the Mount Rainier Wilderness within Mount Rainier National Park. The opportunity arose when I joined my son, Josh, and three of his friends on a backpacking trip a few years after they graduated from college. 

By Frank Keim

Cathy

We’re camped on the Hulahula River,

and after dinner

on a balmy night

five of us marched like caribou

single file

upriver

along a narrow animal trail 

to a tall pingo

sculpted long ago from ancient ice melt,

By Brett Haverstick

BrettMarty met us at the Bear Creek Trailhead at 9 a.m. We left my car in the lot, and she shuttled us over to Blodgett. Tim and I unloaded our packs, and went over our itinerary one last time. We expected to be back at Bear Creek in 5-6 days and then drive my car home.

By Brett Haverstick

BrettI arrived at the Corn Creek trailhead about 4 p.m. in the afternoon. The sun was still hot, and the river canyon felt like an oven, particularly for May. After a few hours of hiking along the trail, I reached Horse Creek, a small tributary of the Salmon River. The creek was loud and brimming bank-to-bank with spring runoff. I decided to cross the creek using the foot-bridge—it was the wrong time of the year to wade into the water and attempt a stream crossing!

by Harriet Greene

 

Howie WolkeWind River Range, Bridger Wilderness, Pinedale, Wyoming: 
The West was drier than it had been in years. Two nearby fires were almost under control. Elkhart Park was closed as well as the south entrance to Yellowstone, nowhere near our direction. After thirteen hours on the road we arrived at our friend’s home in Jackson Hole where we would spend the night. Our gear was unloaded, our food figured out, our backpacks packed and our age-old list, checked off, making sure everything was in order for an early departure in the morning.
 
In Hoback Canyon, ten miles south of Jackson, fire-fighting camps lined the highway  and heavy smoke obscured the landscape. As the haze cleared, two sandhill cranes materialized in a meadow and watched us drive by, unconcerned at all the activity around them. 

by Suez Jacobson


Howie WolkeA long wait – almost 50 years – to learn

How deeply and completely

The wild magic of the Boundary Waters

Could burrow.

A self-identified mountain girl

Lost to still, flat black water

Contained by granite outcroppings

Layered in midnight green pines

Topped with iridescent spring birches.

 

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by Howie Wolke

 

Howie WolkeIn late October, Marilyn and I headed south for a 226 mile 21-day float trip down the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. There were four of us, in two rafts. For most of the 20,000 or so folks who annually float the Colorado, the scenery and numerous challenging rapids are big attractions. But for Marilyn and me, the big draw was the vast desert wilderness that the river punctuates. Although I hadn’t rowed challenging whitewater in nearly two decades, we all made it through the rapids upright, though I had a few close calls.

Wilderness. The Big Outside (Foreman and Wolke, Revised Edition 1992) inventoried the Grand Canyon wildland complex at 2,700,000 acres of roadless country in one unbroken block, the fourth largest such area in the lower 48 states. The 2.7 million acre wildland includes over a million roadless acres within Grand Canyon National Park, but also a number of contiguous national forest and BLM roadless areas and designated wildernesses. 

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By Paul Willis

Paul WillisThere is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up.  —René Daumal, Mount Analogue

 

Sitting here, high on the shoulder of a peak in the Ansel Adams Wilderness, I am looking down at a grassy swale where I startled a herd of eleven mule deer. From this height they are now too small to be seen, but they kept their ground as I detoured around them on scree and talus, not wanting to disturb their pasture. And looking down in the other direction, a blood-red canyon drops away to the round expanse of an alkali lake, from this vantage point its two or three islands an obvious continuation of a series of craters to the south. And, looking up, the summit of the mountain I'm on rises gently, inviting me to visit before thunderheads build and explode, just as they did yesterday on my way down another summit. Such a relief to be lost in sky, no other purpose beyond placing the next boot, the next hoof.     

 

By Ned Vasquez

 

Ned VFor many years, dating back even to my childhood, I have dreamed of spending time in the Alaskan wilderness. In August, 2019 this dream became a reality when my middle daughter and I spent 9 days rafting the Kongakut River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Our trip was organized through a guiding company based in Fairbanks. Our group consisted of 6 clients and 2 guides and we were fortunate to have a highly compatible group. The guiding company did an excellent job of orienting us to the nature of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and ensured that we were as minimally impactful as possible.

 

By Frank Keim

Cathy

Old days drift slowly into new days

and the white eye of the Arctic sun rolls

bright across the night,

as we trek

south

up the Hulahula River,

named more than a century ago

by Hawaiian whalers stranded

on an ocean cold and frozen

before its time.

By Cathy Brandt

Cathy

Due to life-long arthritis and now a bit of the "A" word (age), I can't hike very deep into wilderness areas. However, when I do I'm looking to experience solitude—to get away from masses of people and their litter, cell phones, dogs barking, and aircraft noise. It's very sad that some people have never been away from these distractions and never know what they're missing.

We all deserve wild solitude and I feel human beings actually need it. In the wild all of our senses experience fresh cues, and our lungs take in more clean air and oxygen. For some of us, it can also be a very emotional experience. A few tears may be shed at the sight of a wondrous peak, or a gurgling moss-lined creek. Wild places are my church, and many would agree with me on that!

By Scott Crain

Scott

The Juniper Dunes Wilderness area is a 7000-acre part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, located in southeastern Washington State. It lies just a few miles north of what used to be a quiet part of the state, now exploding with population and development. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation lies a few miles to the southwest, one of the most polluted nuclear waste sites in the country. Just outside the barbed wire fence that surrounds Juniper Dunes lies an off-road vehicle area promoted by the Bureau of Land Management for ORVs and other motorized activities. 

 

I was born and raised a few miles south in Pasco. When I was a kid, the Dunes, as we called them, were a place to go target shooting, driving four wheelers, and doing all sorts of other things that our parents didn't want to know about. I've moved on, but those activities continue unabated right up to the wilderness boundary.

By Kevin Proescholdt

Kevin

In August, my family and I enjoyed our second canoe trip of the summer in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) of northeastern Minnesota.  The 1.1 million-acre BWCAW is a lakeland wilderness with over 1,000 lakes connected by rivers, streams and portage trails. It is part of Superior National Forest and is one of the most visited (if not the most visited) Wilderness in the National Wilderness Preservation System.

 

We enjoyed five days of paddling, portaging, camping, swimming, fishing, and laughing.  But we did have to contend with strong winds almost the entire trip, including becoming windbound overnight at a point of land where the strong west winds howled unimpeded along many miles of open lake.

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