Ode to a Season in the Wild

A Recap of our 2025 Outings & Stewardship Programs

As summer fades and the first snow dusts the mountains, we’re reflecting on an incredible stewardship season and the dedicated community that made it all possible. While this summer looked a little different, we’re grateful to have continued our on-the-ground work to care for Wyoming’s wild places. Staffing cuts across federal agencies presented real challenges for our public lands, reminding us just how vital these partnerships are. WWA knows that our stewardship efforts can never replace the essential work of our federal partners—and we remain committed to advocating for fully staffed and funded agencies to ensure Wyoming’s wildlands receive the long-term care they deserve.

This summer marked our sixth year of solitude monitoring and the inaugural year of WWA Wilderness Ambassadors. It was one for the books:

• 40+ solitude monitoring reports documenting this foundational wilderness characteristic

• 700+ volunteer hours documented within our Solitude Monitoring program alone

• 4 Wilderness Ambassadors serving as the eyes, ears, and boots on the ground in the Cloud Peak, Bridger, and Washakie Wilderness areas
  

To every volunteer, wilderness ambassador, agency, non-profit partner, and generous supporter who gave their time, resources, energy, and passion this season: thank you. You are the heart of this organization, and we couldn’t do this work without you.

Keep reading for first-hand stories from the field, and if you’re inspired to take the next step, sign up to join us next season as a Wilderness Ambassador or Solitude Monitor!

Sign Up for 2026 Stewardship

Wilderness Offers a Rare Connection

By Avery Absolon

This summer my partner Ethan and I collaborated with WWA to embark on two trips into the Washakie Wilderness to get eyes on a number of campsites, many of which had not been visited or documented in several years. Our first hitch was in the Greybull River area, and our second was in the Crandall Creek area of the Absarokas. We photographed each campsite, recorded any structures such as bear poles or bear boxes, and rated its human impact (ie. loss of vegetation, invasive plants, etc.). A few of the popular camps were heavily impacted, but many of them were hardly distinguishable as campsites. 

Having the opportunity to work and play in the Wyoming wilderness is an incredible experience and we found new appreciation for the vast remote landscapes we were in. I am from Wyoming, but my partner is from the East Coast and it was his first time in a Wilderness area, which gave me a new appreciation for it. While we did appreciate the powerful feelings of solitude in these remote areas, we also found ourselves contemplating what wilderness means and how our relationship to these places is itself vital to being good stewards of the land. We noticed that we felt connected to the few people that we did see using the land, and noted that their connection to the place was a part of what made these areas feel special. I believe there is a natural kinship that comes from running into other people in such a remote area. We met a very kind family staying at the most heavily impacted campsite we visited who had kids, horses and dogs with them, and I loved seeing the kids playing and enjoying such a special place. We struck up a conversation with the family and when they heard what we were doing, they began to share with us all of the invasive plants they had noticed, animal signs they had seen, and advice for our days ahead.

Wilderness areas offer us something increasingly rare—places where the land is protected from unchecked expansion and where natural processes can unfold with minimal human interference. Wyoming’s protected landscapes are among our greatest assets, home to incredibly unique ecosystems and vital biological processes. Environmental and human issues are one and the same, and I believe deeply in the importance of seeing ourselves as part of the wilderness, and teaching our children that we belong to the environment—not as a threat to it, but as stewards of it. I hope the work we did with WWA helps keep this incredible and irreplaceable wilderness accessible, so we can continue to learn from it and protect it as a part of ourselves.

A Summer in Cloud Peak Wilderness

By Jason Pinter

Sometimes in life, we all have been busy to a point that it requires us to “wear more than one hat”. We do this to complete projects or to accomplish our goals. For me, this summer required me to wear three – one for Wyoming Wilderness Association, another as a volunteer for the U.S. Forest Service, and a third for the Cloud Peak Chapter of Wilderness Watch. There has been much overlap doing work in the Cloud Peak Wilderness for all three of these organizations that share common goals. These goals include user-created/social trail monitoring, trail clearing and maintenance, collecting water samples for ongoing air and water quality monitoring, and sign updating and replacement.

The work requires me to be out in the backcountry three to four days per week, usually hiking or backpacking ten to fifteen miles per day. Although I have been involved in this sort of work for many years, I am still humbled by what I get to experience while I’m out doing the work. I’m constantly reminded of why I do it and why many of us care so deeply about Wilderness and wild places. For me, it  is so many simple experiences: like hiking over a mountain pass to glimpse a seemingly unlimited field of wildflowers; viewing sun lighting up a high ridge on a crisp mountain morning; the unique experience of getting caught in the snow in July; or it’s the incredible sightings of wildlife that inhabit these spaces. Other times, it’s meeting people on the trail that are clearly enjoying themselves being outdoors and sharing their excitement for what they have discovered.

Back in July, while clearing a tree off the trail, I encountered a family of five that were backpacking into Old Crow Lake in the Cloud Peak Wilderness for an overnighter. We greeted each other at which time the father said to me “nice hat”. My response to him was “which one?” So you can imagine the puzzled look on his face. He then asked what I was doing. It turns out that they were visiting from Minnesota. We spent the next half hour in a conversation about the particulars of the area, including suggestions for a campsite, why Wilderness is special, and my role in it’s care, including being a backcountry janitor (the much less glamorous, but necessary, part of the job). We also discussed why organizations like Wyoming Wilderness Association are so important. As with so many of my encounters with visitors, I felt like I educated the adults and maybe, just maybe, inspired their children as well.

It’s interactions like this that are great reminders of how important this work continues to be. All of us can be stewards of public lands and Wilderness, regardless of age or background. I am grateful for having the opportunity to be involved with and wear the hats of all these organizations.

Running for Solitude

By Gabe Joyes

Solitude is one of the defining characteristics of wilderness as written in the 1964 Wilderness Act. The US Forest Service is required by law to monitor solitude in wilderness areas, but as a result of the DOGE cuts there is not enough staff to make this happen. “The Solitude Monitoring Program” is a partnership between the Wyoming Wilderness Association, federal agencies, and civilians to collect data that helps ensure the correct management and protection of federally designated wilderness areas.

The Gros Ventre Wilderness is an extraordinarily special place that now has no wilderness rangers and no oversight, and it is up to civilians to gather data on what the state of the land is. So along with my friend Luke Nelson, we decided to connect all eight Solitude Monitoring Zones into a 65-mile route. We did the trip as a two-day fun run that included an overnight stop in the Turquoise Lake solitude zone so we could fulfill the 4 hours in one zone requirement as part of the data collecting protocol. All eight Solitude Monitoring Zones were uniquely different and completely wild in their own right! I would encourage anyone who cares about the state of our public land and has a hankering for adventure to take part in WWA’s online Solitude Monitoring training and spend some time in as many zones as they can!

Rock, Paper, Scissors

By Sid Woods

Having camped among the coyotes, pronghorns & nighthawks, I wandered through the remote restoration work site before anyone else arrived. Piles of rock stretched far out along these high meadows of the Red Desert. We intended to hand-place rocks into a variety of Zeedyk structures to help keep moisture here at the top of the Sweetwater River watershed longer into the growing season, bolstering the meadows' resilience in the face of increasing heat and decreasing summer precipitation. Yes, that will benefit the pronghorns, animals who once raced across these steppes with saber-toothed cats. Healthy meadows support southern red-backed voles too, a mouse-like animal favored by those singing coyotes. Underground moisture keeps a diversity of insects winging about, who pollinate a variety of plants--and after whom the nighthawks dive and dance.

Continue Reading Sid's Story

Thank you to our amazing partners for their help with this season of stewardship!

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Wyoming’s wild places rely on people who care — people like you. Your donation to Wyoming Wilderness Association directly supports our stewardship programs and the boots-on-the-ground work that keeps our wilderness areas intact and wild. From trail maintenance and solitude monitoring to volunteer engagement and education, every dollar helps protect the landscapes that define Wyoming. Give today to keep wilderness thriving for generations to come.

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