Visit Wilderness

Search for a wilderness as the destination for your next outdoor adventure.

Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, Minnesota

Why Visit Wilderness?

While wilderness can be appreciated from afar—through online content, television, or books—nothing compares to experiencing it firsthand. Activities like camping, hiking, or hunting allow you to fully enjoy the recreational, ecological, spiritual, and health benefits that wilderness areas offer. These areas provide “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation,” chances to observe wildlife, moments to renew and refresh, and the physical benefits of outdoor exercise. In many wilderness areas, you can even bring your well-behaved dog.

Learn more about the diverse ways in which we benefit from wilderness and threats wilderness areas face today.

It is a land of remote valleys, wild rivers, and a fabulous wildlife population that includes the world's finest Dall sheep, grizzly bears, black bears, caribou, moose, bison, mountain goats, wolves, wolverines, beavers, coyotes, foxes, and marmots.

In the north, the glaciated peaks drop to tundra and boreal forested uplands. In the south, massive glaciers spread from the mountains almost to the Gulf of Alaska.

Several trails provide foot or horse access, but large braided rivers will often stop your progress.

Mosquitoes are thick in the low country during the summer, and enough snow accumulates in the high country to make avalanches a year-round danger.

The bold and the prepared, however, will discover Wilderness travel (by boot, ski, boat, or horse) at its grandest.

On the Canadian side of the border lies Kluane National Park, and together these two areas house what may be this continent's most spectacular mountain kingdom.

Vitus Bering saw a mountain rising far above anything else around and recorded the sighting on July 16, 1741, the first Russian written report of land in Alaska. Bering named Cape Saint Elias four days later, on Elias' saint day, and the name was later given as well to the 18,008-foot mountain (the second highest peak in the United States) that dominates what is now Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park and Preserve, the largest unit of the National Park System.

Here you'll find 12,400,000 acres of national parkland, the most extensive glaciated country of Alaska (with more than 100 glaciers), a vastly rugged land that holds nine of North America's 16 highest peaks (many over 16,000 feet), the 90-mile-long and 4,000-foot-thick Bagley Ice Field (North America's largest subpolar ice field), and the unsurpassed Malaspina Glacier, which spreads 50 percent larger than the state of Delaware.

Leave No Trace

How to follow the seven standard Leave No Trace principles differs in different parts of the country (desert vs. Rocky Mountains). Click on any of the principles listed below to learn more about how they apply in the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness.

Plan Ahead and Prepare
Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
Dispose of Waste Properly
Leave What You Find
Minimize Campfire Impacts
Respect Wildlife
Be Considerate of Other Visitors

For more information on Leave No Trace, Visit the Leave No Trace, Inc. website.

Location

Maps

Digital and paper maps are critical tools for wilderness visitors. Online maps can help you plan and prepare for your visit ahead of time. You can also carry digital maps with you on your GPS unit or other handheld GPS device. Having a paper map with you in the backcountry, as well as solid orienteering skills, however, ensures that you can still route-find in the event that your electronic device fails.

Online Maps

Interactive Map of the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness
Google Earth

Alaska Wildernesses

Printed Maps

Fetching MyTopo from Database

USGS Store

Rules & Regulations

Motorized equipment and equipment used for mechanical transport is generally prohibited in all wilderness areas. This includes the use of motor vehicles, motorboats, motorized equipment, bicycles, hang gliders, wagons, carts, portage wheels, and the landing of aircraft including helicopters.

Wilderness-Specific Regulations

Learn more about why regulations may be necessary in wilderness.

Contacts

Applicable Wilderness Law(s)

Public Law 96-487

Date: December 2, 1980
Acreage: 8,700,000 acres

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act - Public Law 96-487 (12/2/1980) Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

For more information (To download or see all affected wilderness areas) visit our law library for 96-487 or special provisions for 96-487 or legislative history for 96-487.

Want to Volunteer for Wilderness?

People who volunteer their time to steward our wilderness areas are an essential part of wilderness management. Contact the following groups to inquire about volunteer opportunities. Groups are listed alphabetically by the state(s) in which the wilderness is located.