Another Dose of Wilderness Adventures across Our Public Lands

While backpacking deep in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness, my brother Bruce and I found ourselves working our way through miles of blown down trees to exit the wilderness before we ran out of food. It seemed every time we found hikeable stretches of trail we also found bear and wolf tracks. Unfortunately, I complicated everything when I slipped scrambling across downed logs, snagging my left calf on a branch. I felt my flesh tear and knew this wasn't going to help our situation. When I managed to get off of the log pile and onto solid ground I found I had a 4-inch long tear deep in my calf muscle. We had to administer wilderness first aid …

We began backpacking as a family in the 1960s when we lived in Montana near the Bob Marshall Wilderness and continued into the 1980s during family vacations. As retired men we've resumed backpacking with a vengeance post-covid. We come by it honestly. William Wallace Wylie, champion of Yellowstone National Park in its early years, was our Grandpa Harry Wylie's uncle.

The stories in this book recount our hiking trips in Yellowstone National Park and the Wind River Range in Wyoming, the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico, Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, Sawtooth Wilderness in Idaho and Big Bend National Park in Texas. As well as our adventures with extreme weather and elevations, encounters with wildlife including deer, elk, fox, mountain goat, coyotes, rattlesnakes, and bears, and other human hikers. If you like adventure we think you'll really like our book.

Bruce K. Wylie attained a Bachelor of Science in Forestry and Range Management from the University of Montana in 1979. His Master of Science was in Range Science from New Mexico State University in 1989. His Ph. D was in Range Science with a minor in Remote Sensing and was achieved in 1991 from New Mexico State University.

Bruce's focus was introducing computer programs and statistics to Range Science applications initially in the African Sahel in Niger. He later used Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, and field data to produce raster maps using data mining techniques. His work added remote sensing to produce national forage production maps for three different dates in the growing season. The maps were used to assess livestock forage deficiencies associated with droughts.
Subsequent research with the USDA Agricultural Research Service was on nitrate leaching in the Colorado Front Range. Bison – fire interactions in the Great Plains research was with Augustana College and U.S. Geological Survey, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Continued EROS work focused on grassland carbon flux maps in Central Asia and the U.S. Great Plains. Final research focus was on land cover mapping, mapping Cheatgrass (an invasive annual grass, in the western U.S.), and Ecosystem performance anomalies (where ecosystems are doing better or worse than expected) in Alaskan Boreal forests and western U.S rangelands. This Ecosystem Performance approach is currently being developed for western U.S. rangeland drought assessment and forecasting.

Bruce was involved with collecting field data needed to inform mapping algorithms. This included many remote locations in the African Sahel, the U.S. Great Plains grass and shrublands, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Alaskan boreal and tundra areas.

Bruce retired from USGS EROS in 2020 and was lead author or co-author (Orchid ID 0000_0002_7374_1083) of over a hundred scientific journal publications, several non-scientific journals, and several books.

Allan Wylie is the oldest of 5 children in a family that embraced the outdoors. As a child, family vacations included car camping and backpacking. Allan continued that tradition through adulthood and in retirement. Allan achieved a PhD and worked as a groundwater geologist. In retirement Allan remains involved in many environmental related activities including the Idaho Master Naturalist, The Peregrine Fund, and the Intermountain Bird Observatory. Allan Wylie is the oldest of 5 children in a family that embraced the outdoors. As a child, family vacations included car camping and backpacking. Allan continued that tradition through adulthood and in retirement. Allan achieved a PhD and worked as a groundwater geologist. In retirement Allan remains involved in many environmental related activities including the Idaho Master Naturalist, The Peregrine Fund, and the Inter-mountain Bird Observatory.