Ed Quillen

Since I live in Chaffee County, Colorado, home to an even dozen 14,000-foot peaks, I’m used to encountering what we call “peak-baggers” — that is, people bent on climbing all fifty-four 14ers in Colorado, often in the shortest time possible. In recent years, the baggers have become so numerous that old trails have to be rebuilt or rerouted to handle the foot traffic that was despoiling alpine meadows and tundra.

Recently a review book arrived in my office, and it makes me wonder whether our wilderness areas are getting the same treatment — that is, not places to appreciate on their own merits, but as marks on a checklist.

The book is Wild Colorado: A Guide to Fifty-one Roadless Recreation Areas Including the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and the Great Sand Dunes (by Donna Lynn Ikenberry, published by FalconGuide). Doubtless there are many others like it. This one delivers what its cover promises, and provides details about trailheads, relevant maps, administration, ecosystems, etc.

But while providing that information, it raises a bigger question: Who really needs such a guidebook?

Granted, I have a problem with guidebooks in general. The argument for them, whether the concern wilderness, ghost towns, or waterfalls, is that by encouraging visitation, they create a larger constituency for preservation. The counter is that without the visitation inspired by guidebooks, there’s much less need for protection or preservation. That dilemma appears in some of this book’s wilderness-area descriptions, which point out that solitude is hard to find in popular areas like Indian Peaks above Boulder. And presumably, it will become harder to find in other wilderness areas if lots of people buy and use this book.

Even so, if I were planning to hike above Boulder or camp in the San Juan Mountains, I might want a guidebook for the area, one that included non-wilderness zones as well as the protected areas.

But this book seems to be aimed at people who want to visit every wilderness or wilderness study area in Colorado, just on that account.

We used to make fun of those pickup campers or camping trailers whose backs were adorned with decals from Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and sundry other national parks that the drivers had presumably visited, and wanted to boast about.

With this approach to wilderness, there ought to be a similar market for sew-on embroidered emblems for each wilderness locale. Put them on vests, jackets, or packs, and hikers could size each other up immediately to determine relative superiority.

Soon, of course, it wouldn’t be enough just to have visited each wilderness; someone will claim to have visited all fifty-one in less than twenty days, and the race would be on to get that down to under a fortnight, just as there are speed records for the 470-mile Colorado Trail (5 days, 14 hours, and 55 minutes) and climbing all the 14ers (10 days, 20 hours, 26 minutes).

After all, in modern America, what’s the point of going somewhere unless you can brag on it, and do it faster than lesser people? The whole notion of engaging our terrain for its own sake, whether it’s a listed Official Wilderness or not, starts to seem as quaint as hand-cranked ice cream or the Bill of Rights.