Guided wilderness backpacking and camping tours in the Western U.S. can include nearly every kind of landscape imaginable, from hot arid desert to dank rainforest to icy alpine tundra….and everything in between. In the previous couple of posts, I’ve discussed two of our great western wild-land complexes: the Canyon Country wilds of southern Utah and the incomparable Greater Yellowstone National Park Ecosystem.
Yet the history of Wilderness preservation in the U.S. begins in New Mexico. That’s where legendary ecologist Aldo Leopold convinced his reluctant associates in the U.S. Forest Service to set aside over a half million acres in the headwaters high country of the Gila River, as the nation’s first official protected Wilderness Area, the Gila. Of course, the Wilderness Act of 1964 — which provided for Congressional protection — came forty years later, so the first Wilderness Areas were delineated by the Forest Service as administrative designations, that could easily be undone by the stroke of a pen. That’s what happened with a portion of the Gila, when in the early 1930’s the Forest Service de-classified a corridor through the original Gila Wilderness so they could build the new “North Star Road”. Ironically, the area to the east of the non-wilderness road corridor is a now separate Wilderness Area named for Aldo Leopold.
The Gila and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Areas, along with the Blue Range Wilderness just a few miles to the west (extending into eastern Arizona), constitute the greatest mostly undisturbed forested highland region of the American Southwest. Like Yellowstone, the Gila complex is mostly a volcanic landscape, with lava plateaus cut by river canyons and framed by big surrounding mountains. We run a wonderful seven day guided wilderness backpack trip in the Gila Wilderness during each April of odd-numbered years. So start to think about 2019 now! The Gila is an amazing land of mountains, mesas, rugged river canyons, grasslands, pinyon-juniper woodlands, savannas and extensive forests. In fact, the world’s largest remaining virgin ponderosa pine forest is in the Gila, and we explore a big chunk of this grassy open wonderland of huge pine trees. There are elk, mule deer, black bear, bobcat, ringtail and even a small endangered population of the Mexican gray wolf, which was reintroduced into the Gila in the late ’90’s. So make your plans now to join us in the heart of this big southwestern wilderness complex, the “Yellowstone of the American Southwest”.
