"The Quest for Wilderness- Hiking the West One Wilderness At A Time"

June 30, 2008

For those of you that aren't aware, our daughter Sarah, provided John and I with a challenge to hike in every wilderness in the United States. Since neither of us wants, at this time, to cross the Mississippi we have modified that challenge to consist of wilderness West of the Mississippi. The remaining articles under the label of Wilderness will consist of pictures, trail descriptions and just our general experiences while trying to accomplish this challenge.

The first of our wilderness challenges placed us in Eagle Cap Wilderness. We chose this for several reasons. The first being that we were required to be back into Spokane for our other daughter's wedding in six weeks and didn't want to travel to far from home. The second being that we had already been in the area and were somewhat familiar with what we might be getting into. The third and last is simply the beauty of the area. A must for anyone to see whether by hiking or driving a car.


We spent 6 days in the state park campground at the end of the Wallowa Lake. The water entering the lake is glacial flow and cold as hell. The first 3 inches are warmed by the summer sun, but below that is freezing cold. We opted one day while kayaking, the temperature that day was in the 90's, to partake of the water and "lightly" floated on the surface.

The actual first hike that we did into the "Wilderness" was up the "East Fork Wallowa River. A 6 mile hike, one way, to Aneroid Lake with an elevation gain of approximately 3,000 feet. At 2.2 miles out you enter the "Eagle Cap Wilderness". This was the first official start to our challenge and we wanted to make sure that we got a picture of the boundary marker.

The remainder of our hike that day followed a "low maintenance" trail further into the wilderness. we stopped at about 3 1/2 miles out and had lunch but didn't stop for long. The horseflies were obnoxious and made for any attempted enjoyment of the area difficult. We decided to head home as we had a second hike scheduled for 2 days later and I had started to get blisters. The first of many on this adventure.

The area was beautiful, steep and quiet. Waterfalls were numerous and there were several opportunities for view of open meadows and the surrounding moutains.

I would love to say that some great spiritual connection occurred, but in all honestly I was a little out of shape and all I thought about was my huffing and puffing up the hills. Kept telling myself that this is what you get for having a desk job and that "No Pain, No Gain". I was glad that we did the hike and kept hoping that it would get easier for hikes we had planning in the future. Ha!, but that is for future blogs on later hikes.

For now lets just say it was a great way to start our challenge and led to another hike in the area.