In Canada, huts throughout the high mountains are accessed on foot or via helicopter. Helicopter ski operations are commonplace in the country’s mountain ranges. Human impact can easily be seen as quite a bit of infrastructure exists in the mountains.
In Europe, gondolas can take you to huts high in the Alps. Some of these provide you with wine and cheese and all the amenities of a hotel. Indeed, in some cases it feels so much like a hotel, you’d never know you were in the mountains outside the view.
In the United States, things are different.
Many areas have been designated as Wilderness, with a capital W. This designation means that machines are not allowed unless there’s an emergency. Machines include obvious things like snowmobiles and motorbikes, as well as less obvious things like bicycles. It means that permanent installations are not allowed, like gondolas or huts. And it means that an area and its primitive character are to be preserved for future generations.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark 1964 Wilderness Act. This is the law that impacts every outdoor recreationist in the United States, whether they know it or not.
The Wilderness Act was the brainchild of Howard Zahniser, an environmentalist and the leader of the conservation-oriented nonprofit, The Wilderness Society. The process of writing the act took eight years and 60 drafts. But what came out of it was perhaps the best definition of wilderness that we’ve ever had. Zahniser wrote, “a wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
Lauded as one of the greatest conservation achievements in American history, the Wilderness Act established a National Wilderness Preservation System that is managed by the Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service. When President Lynden Johnson signed the act, it immediately preserved 54 areas, which encompassed 9.1 million acres in 13 states.
Since the act became law, the number of preserved areas have ballooned to include 806 Wilderness Areas, including 31 in Washington state. In all, nearly 112 million acres have been preserved with areas in all but six states.
Though groundbreaking, the act isn’t perfect. It is a law with many facets, some of which can be complicated.
First, the act ignored Native Americans and their Indigenous rights within the areas that became Wilderness. Most Wilderness Areas include human history. And one could make a strong argument that these areas have always been managed by the Indigenous people that lived there. Some are working to interpret the act in a way that is respectful to these communities.
Second, the act indicates that, “Wilderness Areas shall be devoted to the public purposes of recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use.” The interpretations of each of these aspects opens up gray areas. For example, the community I most identify with — the climbing community — was using fixed anchors in these areas long before the law existed. And now there’s a push to limit the use of fixed anchors.
The Mt. Baker Marathon made its way up the Ridley Creek Trail in the early 1900s. A piece of that trail is in Wilderness. A local group would like to set up a race that accesses that trail in a way similar to the original race. What’s more important? Wilderness-dictated group size limits or historic use? Can this be accommodated reasonably within the act’s interpretation?
What about grazing? Allowing this was a compromise made to get bipartisan support for the law. But the impacts — especially the ecological impacts of increased grazing since the act’s implementation — are clearly at odds with the spirit of the law.
What about paragliders? Drones? Cameras? Film shoots? Low-altitude aerial tours? Complicated science that requires helicopter support? And what about those that just ignore it with bikes or snowmobiles, those who use power saws for trail construction or build unsanctioned roads?
Every year there’s something else to consider, there’s another way to interpret the law. And every year there are lawsuits about those interpretations.
Even with all these issues, at 60, the act remains vital to the way that we interact with these areas. The concept that the wilderness will be preserved and that it will be there for future generations is important to the health of our planet, our country and to every one of us.
Editor’s note: CDN cannot independently verify “fastest known times,” which are often self-reported with supporting documentation by the hiker/climber.
Jason Martin's outdoors column appears monthly. Email: jason@alpineinstitute.com. Threads: @OutdoorPolitics.
