Author Archives: Howie Wolke

Our mid-August Southwest Yellowstone Bechler Waterfall Wonderland trek, with five guests plus guide Jesse Ford, was yet another great walk through the pristine wilds of the world’s first national park. Yellowstone backpacking is always great! For the record, the 1.5-hour drive from Bozeman to the trail-head was in a torrential downpour that stopped right as […]

This mid-summer trek was guided by Dave Ellis with Mary Byers assisting, and a wonderful mid-summer walk it was! They began the trip in a beautiful mountain valley in the northwest corner of the park, and after setting up camp they enjoyed a mellow nature walk to identify and enjoy spectacular wildflowers blooms in the […]

Yellowstone backpackers usually experience lots of crisp clear weather in September, with warm days and frosty starry nights. But not in 2017! Our September Southwest Yellowstone trip, guided by David Ellis, was a wet one, with nearly unprecedented amounts of rain. Normally easy stream crossings became a raging challenge, but trusty old David got everyone […]

The next morning dawned sunny after the obligatory brief evening thunderstorm. The big bear was nowhere to be seen. We parted with the Californians and hiked over Mist Pass and then down through lodgepole pine into the magnificent Pelican Valley, a high elevation wonderland of grassland, sagebrush, wetland and meandering streams framed by the forested […]

Our 2017 Lamar Backcountry trek will go down in the books as perhaps the greatest trip for wildlife viewing in the 39 year history of Big Wild Adventures! OK, there was that trip in the Gros Ventre Wilderness in 2010 that was also extraordinary, and included a mule deer chasing a wolf. But for sheer […]

In the first two installments of this series, we’ve discussed the timing of our scheduled Yellowstone backpacking trips and the importance of choosing a trip that is within your level of physical capability. Of course, this does not mean that if you are extremely fit you should restrict your choices only to the tougher treks. […]

In the previous blog, I discussed our policy of timing each of our guided Yellowstone backpacking trips by considering the optimal period of the spring, summer and autumn hiking season for a given Yellowstone trip area. That is our responsibility. Your responsibility as a client or potential client, is to choose a guided hiking trip […]

Congratulations! You’ve decided to experience Yellowstone the old-fashioned way, as our ancestors did, on foot and fully submersed in a real wilderness environment. You will happily leave the roads, cars and tourists behind. And you will experience the real Yellowstone, a wondrous and primitive landscape like no other. That’s because over 95% of the park […]

Our nation’s first official Wilderness was the Gila Wilderness, protected administratively by the Forest Service in 1924 at the urging of legendary conservationist Aldo Leopold. The Big Wild Adventures guided New Mexico hiking tour in the Gila Wilderness is offered every other year. So begin to plan now for 2019! Our 2017 adventure was led […]

Unlike most of our Yellowstone backpacking trips, our northern Alaska adventures are all off trail, simply because in most of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the only trails are those created by the hoofs of caribou and other 4-legged animals. Also, we access our hiking areas by airplane (we work with a really great bush […]