The Wilderness High

“Let’s make like a hockey player and get the puck outta here,” said our group leader, Howie Wolke, stamping the tip of his sturdy hiking stick on the lakeside trail. It was the beginning of six days of guided wilderness backpacking in the Yellowstone backcountry. We were four city slickers, led by Mr. Wolke, and we needed to get moving. We’d just taken a ride across the vast blue of Yellowstone Lake in a sturdy little motor launch captained by a sun-leathered employee of the Parks Service, who deposited us on the shore, seven miles from the mouth of the upper Yellowstone River Valley. Mr. Wolke’s outfit, Big Wild Adventures, is built on his 28 years of experience offering people a taste of the wild, and is run by Mr. Wolke and his wife, Marilyn, from their home in Emigrant, Mont. Big Wild offers about 16 backpacking trips a year between April and October, most lasting one week and costing between $1,100 and $3,000 (plus airfare to the trip “base” town). Locations range from the Gila Desert Wilderness in New Mexico to remote parts of Alaska, and Mr. Wolke has recently included a canoeing trip down the upper Missouri River. This trip in the Upper Yellowstone Valley cost $1,400 apiece and was based out of Bozeman, Mont., which we had departed from early that morning.