Wilderness Tripping, or what?

I love it!
g2d thinks being reminded he posted on the wrong board is lame! And he is so right! ROTFLMAO!

Here’s a thought for you.
Pretending that being away from a paved road for a few hours or a few miles is perhaps good for your flagging mental health. But it’s still pretending. BWCA or beyond. Brent wrote that.



On no other paddling forum I’ve ever visited are people so touchy about being told they might have posted in a better place in order to serve their own needs. It seems to have to do with the middle school developmental level and mentality of a few pnetters.



Go ahead and complain to Brent if you want to. Explain why you came over to this forum to bitch at me when you never show up here otherwise. Policing?

Explain what you’re doing over here.
Policing?



My original post makes an incontrovertible point. Many of the posts on this forum have nothing to do with wilderness paddling. This is a slow-moving forum, and one possible reason is that its purpose has been ignored. How would we lure more real wilderness paddlers back to this board?



You’ve made your argument— If you can’t see a house and can’t hear traffic, it must be wilderness. To which I have answered, “BWCA and beyond.” That’s what people mean by wilderness.



Yakky, I’ve been here longer than you, I’ve helped more people than you by a factor of ten, and I’m not planning on changing my views for you, or leaving.



I “policed” no individual in my original post, and if you don’t like my definition of wilderness, you’ve gotten to offer yours, at no cost to you. What does it say about you that you can’t choose to leave it at the level of an honest disagreement?

kayakmedic, wilderness is hard to
define so that the definition includes or excludes marginal cases, but most people I know would recognise that a good number of posts on this forum don’t have anything to do with “wilderness.” And we see rather few posts on this forum by serious wilderness paddlers.



Remind me, did you have something to say about “BWCA and beyond?”

Not yet
I have nothing to say. I will have plenty to say in September about beyond.

I like it
I know I’m one of the newer members here and well under the experience level of most others. However I have to say I like this forum and most of the post I’ve read. The ones I don’t like I just stop reading. I think g2d has a point, it’s just not a valid one by most standards.

I am not a wilderness tripper, but I do hope to be one day. Right now I have work, kids, and other things that keep me from disappearing into the “wilderness” for a month in my canoe. What I can do are weekend trips. On these trips I can practice good habits for future wilderness trips like packing for a week to practice with the load, carrying bear spray and securing my barrel to a tree even though the odds are slim I’ll encounter a bear near DC.



I look to this forum for advice on trips, wether its a week on the Bloodvien river that I’d like to do in the next five years, or a weekend on the james that I’ll do this weekend.



Typos attributed to my IPad.



Scott

Like I said…
…Biscuit Eater.

The forum could be called “canoe &
kayak camping.” That would cover what’s actually under discussion.

Thanks For The Chuckle Kids
I rarely visit from B&B because for the most part it is a boring topic. This has been a good thread humor wise. If you want a wilderness experience in the 48 wear your hiking boots. Water attracts people. It’s the #1 destination for vacationers. In some “wildernesses” campsites have to be assigned because of the crowds.



Experienced wilderness traveler don’t normally look for advise. Why would they be here? I visit just to see what people on this site like to do.



The best way I’ve found to ruin a wilderness is to designate it as one. Turns the place into a people magnet.

Experienced wilderness travelers
share advice on myccr.



There are wilderness runs in the lower 48, and they aren’t at all hard to find. That one may run into other wilderness travelers does not disqualify a run as being wilderness, anymore than running into other hikers disqualifies a trail from being wilderness.



I wouldn’t say that an occasional bit of common sense would disqualify a thread on B&B, either.



This is really just a canoe camping forum.

So…
why don’t you go pester Brent to change the name of the board instead of being a Biscuit Eater to the folks in here who like the board and how it’s used?



Get a life slacker.

A guy named SuperTroll has already
given away all his credibility. You can complain to Brent if you don’t want to discuss this issue in a meaningful fashion.

For 17 Years Forest Service Land
Was literally a stone’s throw from my door. I once shot a deer while standing in my doorway. I used to have a trail maintenance business. If you want to get away from the crowds try restrictive river. The Green at the Gates of Lodore or the Selway come to mind. The Verde in February is nice.



Wilderness is a personal experience unique to the visitor. It’s not about bragging rights. Most wilderness travelers I know best express their wilderness experiences with a knowing smile. It comes from being there. It doesn’t translate very well into writen words. If you want a dialogue about wilderness visit one with a friend.

I like wildlife and solitude in the wild
I feel wilderness is a state of mind as much as place and/or its size. It may also be seasonal in nature. Since most of what we call wilderness today is populated by human inhabitants or multiple visitors, and much of it has been human altered many times. Does it really exist today? Can we say that wilderness exists where we have satellite coverage for phone, GPS, Spot, etc? Does it really matter if your definition or mine jive with one another?



There is a legal definition for designating official wilderness areas and these designated areas exist in both the east and west of this country. So do we only allow discussion of trips in legally designated wilderness areas? What is the cut off for wilderness tripping verses non wilderness trips? I don’t think it is cut and dry.



I have paddled some wild country. I have hiked, camped, and hunted in both eastern and western wilderness areas and certainly don’t think of any of them as true wilderness. I would consider the Antarctic as such, but today there are really few areas of the world’s wild places that can bear up to that standard even when considering much of the Arctic or earth’s oceanic environment.



I feel this forum serves more folks well the way it is currently being used. Changing the title seems of little matter to me. I do think restricting the current topics would be detrimental. I think it is good that experienced wilderness trippers come here to advise the overnight tripper in a place someone thinks of as wild even when it is small of size or close to civilization.



I just have a different perspective and little interest in changing the status of this particular forum. I like wildlife and solitude in the wild. I like being alone or sharing it with a few friends/family best. That suits me better than definitions or place designation.

Can’t
we all just get along…take that any way you chose to.

people who say that…
end up in the bottom of the pool…

Like others, you have disregarded my
original point. This is labeled, and “guidelined” as a wilderness, BWCA and beyond forum, but people are treating it as a canoe camping forum.



I’m not very interested in whether people can draw a clear distinction between wilderness rivers, wild rivers, and the Chicago River, but about half the posts on here can’t be related to “wilderness” or “wild.” I don’t think anyone here can dispute that.



I’ve soloed the Dolores Slickrock, and soloed a fair number of quasi-wilderness streams in the west. Haven’t done the Verde yet. Hard to catch it when there’s water.

Very reasonable OP
I interpret g2d’s OP as simply asking what the purpose of this forum is and whether it is optimally labeled.



I think those are reasonable questions. I find myself never posting and rarely reading this forum because I don’t really understand its purpose or incremental value.



I also think the title is at least doubly ambiguous. “Wilderness” is a word that has been highly (and intelligently) debated on other boards, and I think it’s fair to say it has no definitive meaning, objectively or subjectively.



“BWCA and Beyond” is also not very helpful as a topic specifier because it implies a sort ambiguous directional aspect. To be facetious but to make the ambiguity point, if you live in Manitoba what’s beyond the BWCA could be Chicago.



The only real content help I get from the forum title is the word “tripping”. So, I’ve sort of assumed that the purpose of the forum was to have discussions about extended paddle trips vs. day trips. Yet, the trip reports for extended trips seem to show up either in the Discussion Forum or completely outside the Forums under the Articles-Places to Paddle pull-down menu. Gear discussions, which could apply to extended tripping gear, seem to show up mainly in ASGH Forum.



In sum, I don’t have any particular suggestions for re-organizing or re-titling the forums on this site, but I do personally conclude that there is not the quality of discussion here regarding canoe tripping-planning-camping as there is on CCR or was on the apparently defunct ST. That’s too bad because those sites had a heavy emphasis on Canada.



Another issue for this site re providing attractive information and entertainment regarding canoe tripping and camping in wilderness, or anywhere else, is the apparent inability to embed photographs and videos into the body of posts. I assume that’s some technical issue related to the site software.



So, this is my first and probably last post on this forum – and I regret that it wasn’t even on topic, whatever the topic is. Sorry for trying anyone’s patience.

Possibly overthinking it
One other factor is that the list of designated federal wilderness areas can change. “New wilderness” gets added. Of course, there is no real new wilderness, physically. It’s just a label.

No real freedom, either.
As I said before, most of us who seek wilderness know very well what we’re looking for, and it isn’t a short day run in north Georgia, and it isn’t the Arkansas above Salida. BWCA and beyond says it very well.