Multi-day overnight backpacking and canoe trips

First, look around before you get too invested in a tent sight. On thing that’s guaranteed to ruin a good night’s sleep in the wilderness is to be crushed or skewered in your tent by a falling tree. And in loud enough wind or rain or both, nobody will even hear you squeal!

The easiest way to avoid falling trees is to camp in the middle of a meadow. One problem with this is that it is usually colder, dewier and windier out in the open, so this may not be a great option. Or, it is snowing or raining like hell. Do you really want to be out in the open, exposed? Also, in Yellowstone (but not on our trips in national forest Wilderness), we are required to camp at designated sites, many of which do not include the meadow option. So. What to do? Here’s what I suggest: Look around and use your common sense. If a snag or even a live tree is leaning in one direction, don’t pitch your tent in its trajectory! Don’t try for a Darwin award, at least on a Big Wild trek!

It is also useful to learn some tree identification. Beware of leaning lodge pole pines and also Engelmann spruces. Aspens are a safer bet, as are Douglas-firs which have deep root systems and are therefore less likely to fall at any given time. But less likely does not mean “unlikely”. Really, it is best to pitch your tent where the surrounding tress will fall away from your location. Consider both wind direction and leaning angle. I have seen (and heard) many trees fall in the forest. Occasionally I’ll see or hear one go down when there’s very little wind and soil that is not saturated. Sometimes it is that tree’s time. Like us, trees eventually fall, independent of external factors. And so our job as campers on a guided wilderness backpacking trek is to make sure that when they do, we are unlikely to get squished or skewered. Yes, bears get most of the press when it comes to danger out in the wilds, but it is the more mundane hazards that are more likely to do us in while backpacking in Yellowstone: falling, drowning, lightening, driving to the trail-head, and yes, getting plonked by a falling tree.

Yellowstone is the world’s first national park, established in 1872. And Big Wild has organized and run guided Yellowstone backpack trips since 1979. Because the Park Service has built too many roads and facilities in Yellowstone, and because it encourages motor tourism above all else, it costs them a lot of money to provide the amenities needed by over 3 million annual tourists, most of whom rarely ever leave the roadside. Even though over 90% of the park is back-country de-facto wilderness, over 90% of its human visitation is front-country. These tourists demand gasoline, restaurants, stores, cell towers, parking lots, campgrounds, electricity, WiFi and roadside bison and bears that will cooperate with cell-phone photography.

Who pays for all of this habitat fragmentation? We do. We as taxpayers, that is. Yet as Congress continues to cut budgets for the national parks, agency managers are looking for ways to augment funding so that we can have wider roads, fewer potholes, more cell towers and spiffier lodges and visitor centers. In other words, the National Park Service needs more funds to accommodate more tourists since our country has more people each year (the population bomb has exploded) — and more international travelers, too. More more more. More of everything is deemed to be better. Ask the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce. But of course, when it comes to wild nature, more humanity is not better.

As I type this missive it still costs 15 bucks a head to enter Yellowstone, or 30 dollars per automobile. Not too bad a deal, really, although just a few months ago the Feds wanted to double the fees. That produced an outcry, and rightly so, because such entry fees would be a hardship for many. So for now, public outrage saved the day. The fees are scheduled to go up by just $5 this June: to $20 per person or $35 per auto. But I’ll wager that within a year or so, they will go up again. And then again, incrementally. For now, though, a Yellowstone vacation is still affordable, thanks to public outcry. But I do wish that we could garner the same level of public outrage for the lack of designated Wilderness in Yellowstone, or for killing bison, or for the tragic upcoming Wyoming hunting season for grizzlies on public lands outside the park…..

Actually, what I really wish for Yellowstone is that the Park Service and its supporters would re-think the basic premise of  the park. Perhaps we might reconsider the placement of some of the roads, like the one through Hayden Valley, one of the greatest temperate zone wildlife habitats on Earth. Roads can be removed and wildness restored. Let’s re-wild Hayden Valley! Let’s also get rid of the L.A. Freeway-style four lane cloverleaf monstrosity at Old Faithful. Let’s limit vehicles. Let’s remove back-country power line corridors (yes, theses insults do exist!) — bury them along the roads. I’m for more grass, less pavement. Fewer humans and more bears. More silence and less motor noise. None of these suggestions will be easy to accomplish, but nothing worthwhile ever is. Let’s ask: what do we really want for Yellowstone as the 21st century unfolds? So until we begin to debate the very premise of unlimited motorized industrial tourism in Yellowstone, I will continue to oppose more funding and bigger budgets for the Park Service, whether they come from increased entry fees or a well-meaning but misguided budget increase enacted by some future Congress.

If a tree falls in the forest and a Big Wild group is there to hear it, then it definitely makes a noise (If a man speaks in the forest and there’s no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?). And if the Big Wild group is there to hear the tree fall, our strategy is to prevent our guide or clients from being in the landing zone at the inopportune moment!

How do we do this? I’ll get to that. First, let’s be clear that both live trees and standing snags fall over, though snags are more vulnerable. In 1988, about half of Yellowstone National Park was within the perimeter of one of the 7 or 8 named wildfires, though only about half of that acreage burned hot enough to kill most of the trees. Still, that’s a lot of land and a lot of dead trees. Now, thirty years later, many have fallen but millions still persist as snags. And of course,  at least a few wildfires burn in Yellowstone every year, not just in 1988. As noted in the previous post, from an ecosystem perspective, a forest with lots of dead trees is not “unhealthy”. Many wild species benefit from an influx of dead wood into the system. Lightening-ignited wildfires have been burning in western and northern North America for thousands of years, and our forest and range land ecosystems are well-adapted to this natural disturbance. And although live trees also blow over — usually influenced by strong winds or saturated soils —  snags are the greater hazard, because their roots die and rot and no longer hold the tree in place.

On our Yellowstone backpacking trips, lodge pole pine is usually the most abundant tree. It is also very shallow-rooted, depending upon a flush of spring moisture as the snow melts and then upon the frequent but usually brief afternoon Yellowstone thundershowers, which usually keep the high plateaus well-watered. Lodge pole forests are beautiful, often with grassy under-stories, but because these shallow-rooted trees are susceptible to wind and saturated soils, they can be dangerous for those who are careless in selecting a tent site. In the final installment of this series, I’ll recommend some basic safety procedures for staying safe in a snag-filled forest.

It may be counter-intuitive, but dead trees are indicative of a healthy forest. Note that a forest differs from a tree-farm. A forest is diverse, usually with plenty of dead downed wood, standing snags, living trees, shrubs, grasses and forbs. Wildlife is usually abundant due to the diversity of habitats provided by the forest and its woody and leafy structures. By contrast, tree farms are impoverished, with many of the aforementioned forest features eliminated in the quest to maximize cellulose production. In a tree farm, dead or dying or twisted or multi-branching trees are a waste. That’s because in plantations trees are an economic product, not an important facet of biodiversity. To an ecologist, though, dead trees are habitat.

Our guided Yellowstone backpacking treks explore forests, not tree farms. As do our guided hiking tours elsewhere in the West, including Wyoming and Montana, Utah, New Mexico and Alaska. Because we backpack in untrammeled wild roadless country that has never been logged or heavily manipulated by industrial humans, expect to encounter dead trees. And that’s a good thing.

Standing dead trees are called “snags” and they often stand for decades before they fall. While they stand, they provide food, nesting and roosting habitat for dozens of bird species, including various owls, woodpeckers, nuthatches and more. Squirrels, marten, fisher, black bears and many other mammals also utilize snags, especially when they are partially rotted out with nesting or denning “hollows”. Snags provide shade for re-growth after a forest fire. When the snags fall, they provide cover for elk, moose, bear and many other species; and once on the ground they provide “drumming logs” for ruffed grouse and hunting routes for marten. And, as they rot, they can become a “nurse log” for tree seedlings. Rotten wood also captures and retains critical moisture in ares with dry summers, like much of the Rocky Mountain region. They recycle nutrients back into the soil. When they fall across slopes, dead trees also reduce erosion. When snags fall into streams and rivers, the dead wood forms pools which are great trout habitat. They also stabilize stream-banks and releases nutrients into the aquatic ecosystem. This is all just a general outline on the value of dead trees. I’ve barely scratched the surface. But you get the picture. Do not let a forester tell you that a forest with lots of dead trees is “unhealthy”. It is not!

In the next installment, we’ll begin to discuss safety among dead trees, because of course, eventually they do blow over and when they do, we don’t want them to land on our clients.

OK, now you know: give any large animal plenty of space. But what about the smaller critters? Well, the same rules apply, if for no other reason than when it comes to native wildlife, while backpacking in Yellowstone you are the visitor and the wildlife is at home. Simple courtesy dictates that our goal should always be to minimize disturbance.

Speaking of smaller creatures, there are rattlesnakes in Yellowstone. However, due to the cold climate in most of the park — and indeed most of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE)– rattlesnakes are absent from most areas. In Yellowstone, the only habitat that supports this fascinating venomous creature is the lower portion of the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone River, along the northern border of the park near the town of Gardiner.  That area is the lowest elevation with the warmest and driest climate in Yellowstone, the only area of the park that can support these reptiles. The local species is the prairie rattlesnake, and it is the only venomous snake in the Greater Yellowstone. It occurs at the lower elevations around the fringes of the ecosystem, mostly east of the Continental Divide. When in rattlesnake country, keep your eyes and ears open, avoid dense brush, and don’t put your hands on rocks where you can’t see what might be curled up in the sun, just out of sight!

Other venomous creatures that are abundant in the warmer climate of the American Southwest — such as scorpions, centipedes and black widow spiders — are generally absent in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with the exception of black widows. These dangerous spiders are now established at the lower elevations mostly around the ecosystem fringes, but probably not in the park. Old timers say that their appearance is a recent development, because the colder climate of “the old days” kept these spiders out of the region. As climates continue to warm, poisonous creatures will continue to expand their ranges upward in elevation and northward.

There you have it. For now. Again, living safely with wildlife while backpacking in Yellowstone is mostly a matter of being alert, giving animals space, and using your brain. Really, it’s mostly common sense. Enjoy!

When it comes to wildlife safety on a guided Yellowstone backpacking trip, most of our clients think of bears. And that’s understandable, since Yellowstone grizzly bears do occasionally chomp on folks — usually those who precipitate the ursine action with some overt act of human stupidity: like closing in on the bear for a photo. Or running. Or being careless with food. Yet as we saw in the previous post, any large animal can be dangerous, so give them space!

At our hour long pre-trip safety/orientation meetings, our guides spend about 20 minutes discussing bears . Although the danger from bears is over-rated compared with driving to the trail-head, falling, drowning or getting zapped by lightening, this part of the safety session takes extra time because it is a complicated subject. Bears are complex, intelligent and individualistic animals. A comprehensive tome on safety around bears is beyond the scope of this brief post. I suggest you begin your bear education by viewing our Bears in the Big Wilds web page. For now, though, know a few simple rules: Be careful with food! A clean camp is a safe camp. Never bring any food inside your tent. And never run from a bear, even if you know you can out-run your hiking partners! Leave your deodorant and scented soap at the motel. The more human your smell, the better. Be alert. And please, leave the bear bells at home. If I were a bear and heard bear bells coming down the trail, I would attack that person just to silence the annoyingly incessant ringing! Also, always carry your pepper spray in a handy location, not inside your pack or day-pack. Don’t leave your tent without it. Don’t even go to dig a cat-hole without it. Clients have had encounters with bears while squatting over a cat-hole (though no physical contact has ever occurred between bear and human great ape on a Big Wild trip)! Again, these are just a few things to think about. Your guide will  provide comprehensive safety instructions and then once you’re on the trail, you’ll also learn by doing. It’s not rocket science; it’s mostly common sense, and our safety record with big mammals is perfect. And we plan to keep it that way! We also supply the pepper spray along with instructions on how to use it. Yet we’ve never had to discharge pepper spray at a bear in all of our years.

Again, though, it’s not just about bears. Bison and moose can be dangerous. Even a mule deer can do some damage with a swift kick. So use your telephoto lens. Listen to the guide. And the chances that you’ll be naturally selected out of the human population on a Big Wild trip will be infinitesimally small.

Some say that when tourists visit Yellowstone, they leave their brains back home. Many do, and the evidence abounds! For example, while driving through the world’s first national park, an observant visitor can see: tourists driving large often rented motor homes (they’ve never driven anything this big before), crossing the center line as they gawk at roadside bison or at a pretty scene. Drivers beware! That’s why we tell our clients that the most statistically dangerous part of any back-country trek is the drive to the trail-head. On that drive, you’ll also likely see tourists with photographic devises — in some cases real cameras — “stalking” these two-thousand pound horned hoofed beasts at way too close a distance. I’ve watched people literally within just a couple feet of wild bison, though I’ve never actually watched anyone get gored. I did once watch a bison gore my backpack, though there were no tourists inside it at the time — and it was not on my back!

Make no mistake, these animals, and all of Yellowstone’s wildlife, are wild.  Yellowstone’s bison are potentially lethal! It is truly a wonder that more tourists don’t get gored or trampled into Darwinian oblivion. By the way, when I see extreme examples of wildlife viewing idiocy, I usually roll down my window and yell something like “You’re too close; you will die!” For better or for worse, though, I am aware that the vast majority will survive, despite themselves.

You might also notice a bear or two on your drive through the park, and if so, you’d also notice similar attempts by tourists to be naturally selected out of the human population by crowding these large carnivores. In fact, trying to get close enough for that great photo of a grizzly is an efficient way to enter the food chain. That has been proven on a number of occasions. Still, as with bison, it is a wonder of nature that Americas’ population is still growing, considering that over three million tourists pass through the Yellowstone entrance stations each year, many without so much as a clue that they’re entering wild habitats with big wild animals that don’t give a hoot for human safety.

Here at Big Wild Adventures, we do give a hoot and we make sure that safety is built into our guided Yellowstone backpacking trips. Although we guide in the back-country, the same safety principles pertain. And not just for bears and bison, but really, any large mammal can be dangerous when approached too closely. That includes elk, moose, wolves, coyotes, some of us humans and more. Heck, I wouldn’t even crowd a sandhill crane! In other words, give wild animals space. That’s why Nikon and Canon make telephoto lenses. In Yellowstone, it is against the rules to knowingly be less than 25 yards from any large mammal, or less than 100 yards from a bear or a wolf. In the next installment, we’ll delve further into the Big Wild way of keeping our clients safe in the back-country, and safely out of the food chain.

Wilderness areas, such as the vast Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness just northeast of Yellowstone National Park, represent America’s highest level of landscape protection. Undeveloped chunks of public lands qualify for Wilderness designation by Congress under the Wilderness Act of 1964. According to the Wilderness Act, a Wilderness Area is “untrammeled”, meaning unregulated or un-manipulated. It is wild, left on its own, where humans practice restraint and where “the impact of man’s works (sic) are substantially unnoticeable.” In designated Wilderness, there is no road or building construction, no resource extraction, and no mechanized transportation. The area is wild and natural, and although Wilderness areas represent great guided backpacking opportunities, their multi-faceted contribution toward maintaining a healthy planet is more important. For example, native biodiversity conservation and clean water are two iconic Wilderness values. Our guided Yellowstone Ecosystem backpacking treks visit the Absaroka-Beartooth, Gros Ventre, Fitzpatrick, Washakie and Jedediah Smith Wilderness areas.

In addition, Congress has designated a number of “Wilderness Study Areas” in which the decision to designate the areas Wilderness (or not) is delayed, usually for political reasons. The Palisades (straddling the Wyoming/Idaho border near Jackson), Shoal Creek (a potential addition to the Gros Ventre Wilderness) and the Wyoming High Lakes potential addition to the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness are the three major WSA’s in the Wyoming Yellowstone region, and the northern Gallatin Range is the big WSA in the Montana portion of the greater Yellowstone. All of these areas are now vulnerable to extreme anti-conservationists in Congress and in the Trump Administration who are attempting to strip them of protection!

I also mentioned a couple million acres of unprotected national forest road-less areas, which still have at least some limited protections under the Clinton Roadless Rule. Unfortunately, though, they are also the target of radical off-road vehicle abusers — not to mention the oil and timber industries. A big part of wild land conservation is the effort to keep these vulnerable areas wild.

Of course, Yellowstone and Grand Teton are national parks, which generally are protected from resource extraction or livestock grazing (with a grazing exception for part of Grand Teton). But until the back-country areas of these two iconic national parks are protected as Wilderness Areas under the 1964 Wilderness Act, new roads, tourist facilities and the potential for opening the back-country to mechanized transportation loom as threats even to these world famous icons of the still living but ever fading American wilderness.

In the previous post I mentioned that the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is largely a highland that rises above the surrounding high desert and prairie landscapes. That’s a good thing for our guided backpack trips in the Yellowstone region, because the high country is pleasantly cool during the summer vacation season. So you’ll not be backpacking in shade-less 95-degree desert or prairie afternoons! Where might you actually be hiking on our guided greater Yellowstone hiking tours? Well, Big Wild Adventures has guiding permits for the best backpacking areas in the region — and perhaps in the entire world! Of course, we have a variety of great trips in the Yellowstone back-country. Marilyn and I not only live just a few miles from Yellowstone, but along with our other guides we know this wonderland as well as anyone on Earth. But we also lead guided hiking trips in the nearby Fitzpatrick Wilderness portion of the Wind River Range, the Washakie Wilderness of the Wyoming Absarokas, the Beartooth Mountains of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, the Gros Ventre Wilderness near Jackson Hole, and the spectacular Jed Smith Wilderness section of the incomparable Grand Tetons!

The Greater Yellowstone is the headwaters region of some of our great river systems (the Columbia, Colorado and Missouri/Mississippi). It is also an ecological crossroads where flora and fauna of the Great Plains, the Great Basin, the Canadian boreal forest, plus alpine/arctic lands to the north, Rocky Mountain endemics and even just a bit of the Pacific Northwest blend together in an astoundingly diverse landscape. Folks who’ve been backpacking with us in Yellowstone and its surrounding wilds can attest to the sudden changes in scenery and flora over short distances.  Want to experience just a bit of the Pacific Northwest? Join us in the Bechler Canyon of Southwest Yellowstone. Want a good dose of high tundra reminiscent of Arctic Alaska? Try our Montana backpacking in the Beartooths or our Wyoming backpacking in the Absarokas. Want to be immersed in deep coniferous forest with many elements of the Canadian boreal ecosystem? The Yellowstone Plateau Off-Trail trek will do the trick. And so on….This is an amazing diverse ecosystem, and no matter how many guided hiking treks you do with us, there will always be more to explore in the unsurpassed Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem!

As previously noted in our March 15 blog, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is one of the great remaining wildland complexes on Earth, sprawling over roughly 16 million acres — or 25,000 square miles — of northwest Wyoming, southern Montana and extreme eastern Idaho. Yellowstone National Park encompasses about 2.2 million acres in the core of the region. By the term “wildland complex”, I simply mean a cohesive geographic area that is dominated by large chunks of undeveloped wild country in close proximity to one another. Some of the wild areas are protected and some are not. Although our company is noted for our Yellowstone backpacking trips, we also run guided wilderness hiking trips elsewhere throughout much of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. More on this later.

In the March 15 post, I mentioned that the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem may be the most ecologically intact wildland complex in the temperate zones of planet Earth, still supporting populations of every vertebrate species known to have been here prior to European colonization. Of course, some species, such as Canada Lynx, are greatly reduced, but in most of the temperate world a big chunk of the native fauna has long since gone the way of the Dodo. Not here, and many of us are working to keep it that way! Which isn’t easy, because population growth is encroaching on GYE habitat, and associated pressures for mechanized recreation and resource extraction threaten the integrity of this world-renowned landscape.

Most of the GYE is a volcanic highland of mountain and plateau rising above high desert landscapes to the west, south and east, and the Montana prairie to the north. I mentioned that the public lands of the GYE include both protected and unprotected areas. Our Yellowstone backpacking trips are mostly within protected areas. Among the notable protected areas are the contiguous Bridger/Fitzpatrick/Popo Agie Wilderness areas of the famed Wind River Range; the Washakie and Teton Wildernesses (actually one unbroken area) adjacent to much of the southern and eastern Yellowstone park boundary, and the North Absaroka Wilderness just north of the Washakie.  Just to the northeast of the park is the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. The Gros Ventre Wilderness lies directly across the valley of Jackson Hole from the Tetons, and the Jedediah Smith Wilderness forms the west slope of the Tetons. The relatively small Winnegar Hole Wilderness is just to the north abutting Yellowstone. The Lee Metcalf Wilderness lies a bit to the west and northwest of the park.

Of course, Yellowstone itself is also somewhat protected as a national park, though not yet as designated Wilderness. And there are also a handful of semi-protected “Wilderness Study Areas” in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In addition to all of these lands, there are over 2 million acres of unprotected public land road-less areas, mostly within the Bridger-Teton, Shoshone, Targhee and Custer-Gallatin National Forests. These areas also qualify for Wilderness designation. In many ways, the long term fate of the GYE hinges upon what happens to these still wild but unprotected “roadless areas”.

In the next two installments, we will look at the natural features of the GYE and then we’ll also discuss how the various land classifications will impact the long term fate of this magical landscape that’s know as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.