My concern isn’t about a desire for my own solitude.
A while back Tom Kirchner was bemoaning the amount of trash and other human impact in remote off-trail locations in his beloved portions of the Sierra that were once pristine wilderness — areas he has been visiting for decades. This is my concern.
It is time to revisit the concept of Wilderness Ethics. As someone who has spent decades walking areas once “untrammeled by man” I see the impact and consequences of too many people marching into our wilderness — most driven there by trail guides. Without trail guides many of these areas would have remained wilderness untrammeled by man.
I was working on a blog post when I started this thread, just to see what the response would be. As I unfortunately expected, no one is speaking for Wilderness — just their own desire to travel a pristine area without thought to the negative impact of trail guides: the entitlement mindset that trail guides are a good thing without considering the consequences to the wilderness itself.
Here is my blog post: Wilderness For Sale
My hope is that I can inspire a handful of people to think about wilderness and our proper place in it, who in turn can encourage others to approach wilderness in an ethical manner. Perhaps we can create a renewed focus on Wilderness Ethics.
Am I advocating that people do not write about their adventures? No, I am not. I see that pmags posted a comment here about his own Wind River Obscure Route that he recently posted on his blog. You can go to his blog and read about it — (I would post the link, but this crappy forum software will not allow us to post more than one URL link, and I already posted one earlier). It is a trip report that only includes a general description of the location and lots of pictures. This is the correct approach. I have never met Paul, but as a reader of his blog I know he often writes about and advocates for the concept of Wilderness Ethics. He is one of the few backpackers on the Internet today that publicly advocates for Wilderness Ethics. His trip report is the responsible way to conduct one’s self on the Internet.
Perhaps BPL, both the readership and the ownership, should start writing more about Wilderness Ethics instead of gear and detailed information on where to walk.
Who speaks for Wilderness? It certainly isn’t backpackinglight.com, periodicals like Backpacker Magazine, publishers of trail guides, or people who post detailed maps of routes with GPS waypoints in pristine wilderness.
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