Into the Wild

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Day One: Setting out from NOLS headquarters

The first hike, which began in midafternoon, actually turned out to be as easy as advertised. We entered the Winds at an area called the Sinks, at about 7,300 feet, and followed the Middle Fork Trail for about a mile and a half, through a postcardlike setting of pine trees, frothy mountain streams, yellow wildflowers, and bleached white boulders, until we reached a place called the Granite Buttress, an expanse of rock, interspersed with grass, looking out onto a tree-lined ridge. We ate dinner and learned how to set up our tents. Kat and Missy demonstrated the fine art of digging a latrine in the woods and then we went to sleep as the sun was going down.

Day Two: Granite Buttress, in the Fossil Hill area of the Shoshone National Forest, east of the Freak Mountains, 7,800 feet

Waking up in the wilderness that morning, our first task was to get comfortable, and that meant getting personal. It was weird to open your eyes in the morning and be immediately confronted by people you're not related to. "Now I know you even wake up perky," Nancy said to Chris, over a breakfast of oatmeal, fruit cobbler, and strong coffee. "I only got up to pee once in the night," announced Patti when she arrived at breakfast. "You peed on Tony," joked Chris. "Oh, was that that warm feeling?" Tony said.

After breakfast, it was time to start NOLS' formal leadership curriculum, with an exercise designed to tease out leadership styles. With birds chirping and butterflies swooping overhead, Missy placed two green ropes on the ground in the shape of a cross, and based on the answers to a series of questions had the group sort itself until each person ended up in one of four quadrants that corresponded to four types: analyst architect, relationship master, driver, spontaneous motivator. Perry, it turned out, was a relationship master--which seemed to surprise many of his co-workers.

This wasn't much different than what consultants do in conference rooms all across the country--except in terms of what came next. The group was to think about this exercise and its implications while we got actual exercise--hiking to our next camp. "Here's a thought for the day, to think about when we're hiking," said Missy. "Where do you slide? In what kind of a situation do you move from one style to another?" "And another thing to think about," added Kat. "How do you define progress? How do you define success?"

Soon, it was time to get going. We hoisted our 45-pound packs onto our backs and split into two groups to hike, stopping every hour or so to refuel. We hiked four miles deeper into the forest, hanging along the Popo Agie River, past the picturesque Popo Agie waterfall, and eventually reached a wooded spot called Sheep Bridge. Upon arriving in camp, we pitched tents and cooked dinner. Not long after the sun went down, we strapped on our miner-style headlamps to find our way back to our tents and our sleeping bags, and everyone quickly fell asleep.

Day Three: Sheep Bridge, just east of the national wilderness area boundary, 8,600 feet

By the next day, it had begun to feel like we'd settled into a kind of routine: up with the sun, pop some vitamin I (that would be ibuprofen) for the stiffness, aches, and pains, cook breakfast over the two stoves we carried in. Then Missy or Kat would lead a class on leadership, with the group sitting on whatever rock outcropping was handy. The team would talk about the content of the class, relating it back to issues they were dealing with at work--often discussing specific people at the office and how they might approach personnel changes. Then we'd pack up, split into two groups, and hike again.

This was one of our longer days, a six-mile trek in which we gained about 1,500 feet of elevation, a lot of it in a few very steep stretches. The path took us through deeply wooded areas, where we spotted a baby moose in the distance, and some open marshy areas, where we were plagued by mosquitoes. It took us to streams that we had to balance on rocks or logs to cross. Just before we arrived at our camp, Missy spotted a black bear track in the mud.

Day Four: En route to high camp, just below 12,000 feet

We planned to follow the long hike with a shorter one today and find a camp that we'd stay at for two nights, ideally one close enough to the Wind River Peak so that those who wanted to could take a day trip to the summit without their heavy packs. As we put our packs on, the chatter was about family. Patti said her grandfather had taught her and her sister a lot of silly songs. She started singing one with great gusto: "Oh, Alice, where art thou going? Upstairs to take a bath. Hey, Alice, shaped like a toothpick and a head like a tack!" She finished to applause and cheers and the day was off on a fun note.

As usual, we'd hike in two groups, today to be led by Nancy and Andy. Whichever group got to a predetermined spot on the map first would drop packs and search for a truly excellent campsite. When the other group arrived, they would also drop packs and scout, and then we'd compare notes. I hiked with Nancy's group, which included Perry, Chris, and Missy. Since she didn't have a lot of experience reading topographical maps, Nancy delegated that task to Missy and Chris, and asked them to take the lead. And since she'd already observed that I was a good deal slower than the rest of the group on the trail, she decided to hike with me, to keep me going and help me out.

We were now high enough into the mountains for it to be cold; snow was still on the ground. We caught up with the other group and all of us managed, somehow, to cross a rapidly flowing rocky river. It was just slightly upstream from a waterfall. "If you fall in the water, get your feet downstream and get your head above water," Chris advised me. Once on the other side, we dropped packs and had snacks. Perry took off his boots to see how his feet were doing. The answer: not well. He'd bought the first pair of boots he tried on the weekend before, which had turned out to be a huge mistake. They were just a bit too big on him, and as his feet slid around inside, they were transformed into a bleeding, blistering mess. While everyone ate and rested, he tended to the padding and bandages on his feet. He didn't eat anything. This also turned out to be a mistake.

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