Author Archives: Howie Wolke

For many folks, campfires are an integral part of the wilderness backpacking experience. On most of our guided Yellowstone multi-day backpacking treks, we enjoy the warmth of a morning and evening campfire. Yet fires are illegal at some camps, either because of a dearth of available dead wood or because of localized heavy use in […]

A funny thing happened on the way to wolf recovery. While leading our guided Yellowstone backpacking trips, by the late 1990’s I began to notice that old dying aspen stands were beginning to sprout vigorous new saplings. Now, 24 years after the 1995 wolf re-introduction,  these important deciduous habitats are thriving once again. Willow stands […]

By the time the U.S. stock market crashed in 1929, the native gray wolf (northern Rocky Mountain subspecies, Canis lupus irremotus) had been essentially exterminated throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). The extermination was intentional, primarily to benefit cattle and sheep ranchers who had no use for predators that enjoy an occasional meal of beef […]

During the guiding season, my backpack is my exercise machine and the wilderness is my outdoor gymnasium. Of course, as I’ve long argued, wilderness is much, much more than an outdoor gymnasium: it is the genetic repository of 3.5 billion years of organic evolution, and it has intrinsic value simply because wilderness provides habitat for […]

OK, you’ve lost the abdominal basketball, you’ve quit smoking and your probation officer has OK’d your travel to Montana for a guided backpacking trip with Big Wild Adventures. Great! What now? Hopefully, you won’t first begin to ponder this question right before your trip. That’s because, unless you stay fit year-round (as a shrinking minority […]

Our guided hiking trips in Yellowstone National Park — and for that matter, our trips throughout the American West and Alaska — all require a certain level of physical fitness. The level of fitness required for a guided backpack trip depends upon the trip rating. For example, a “fairly strenuous” trip is going to be […]

Marilyn and I live in southern Montana just a few miles from Yellowstone, and a big chunk of our business is guided Yellowstone backpacking trips. And our Yellowstone backpacking adventures are wonderful! Let’s face it — there is only one Yellowstone, and about 95% of the park is roadless back-country that is wild and teeming […]

In the previous installment, I discussed the geographical quirk that the wildest areas of Montana are all border areas, shared with Canada, Idaho and Wyoming. The wild Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem along the Canadian border includes the 2.4 million acre Bob Marshall Wilderness complex, which is actually one unbroken chunk of roadless, undeveloped wild country. […]

Montana may be known as “Big Sky Country”, but the scale of its primary landforms — sprawling prairies and towering mountains — is equally big. So are a number of its protected Wilderness areas and national parks, at least by 21st century standards. And many of her native populations of wildlife are also big and […]