Backpacking Staff

Big Wild Adventures is owned and operated by Howie Wolke and Marilyn Olsen.

Howie Wolke has led over five-hundred multi-day treks since the mid 1970s. He is the most experienced backpacking guide in the Western U.S. He has been the subject of various magazine articles and is also a well-known advocate for protecting wilderness. He has written two books on wildland conservation, including the Big Outside (co-authored with Dave Foreman), a historic inventory of America's remaining big wilds. So Howie doesn't just know wilderness, he literally wrote the book on it! Also his articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications. As a public speaker, he has addressed college and other groups across the country. Howie is a part-time instructor of Environmental Studies at Montana State University (Billings campus), where he designed and teaches the course "The American Wilderness". He is also a former President of the national conservation group Wilderness Watch and now serves as an Advisor. Howie also has a particular affinity for wolves and grizzly bears, and has a B.S. in Conservation and Wildlife Ecology.

Marilyn Olsen has explored wilderness from the Everglades to Alaska, from Africa to the Arizona desert. She is a registered nurse with expertise in wilderness medicine. She is a former trip leader for the University of Montana's "Wilderness and Civilization" program, and in that capacity led canoe trips on Montana's wild and scenic upper Missouri River, as well as various backpack treks. An experienced wilderness advocate, Marilyn's efforts in conservation education for young people are particularly innovative. She also has valuable insights on group dynamics, and her ability to see and explore the often overlooked intimacies of the wilderness environment are unique.

Howie and Marilyn live in southern Montana, in the foothills of the Gallatin Range, just north of Yellowstone National Park.

ALL BIG WILD ADVENTURES GUIDES are experienced professionals. Howie and Marilyn lead many of our trips, but our other guides are equally capable, and will provide our guests with an equally great experience. Unlike some outfits, your guide will not be an inexperienced young person.

Larry Campbell

Larry has guided occasional trips for Big Wild since the mid 1980’s. He grew up in rural Colorado and received a degree in geology from Princeton, where he worked hard to survive culture shock. He is a founder of Southwest Outward Bound and he worked for 10 years as an instructor and course director for Southwest Outward Bound and Colorado Outward Bound. After years of traveling in mountainous pre-industrial cultures, he hand-built a log cabin in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley in an effort to live in comfortable simplicity that might be sustainable without encouraging the reckless pillaging of resources. When he’s not guiding for Big Wild, Larry occasionally works as a mineral exploration geologist, and he also works as a wildland conservationist to “help save the parts”, to paraphrase Aldo Leopold. Being in Wilderness allows Larry to rest his compulsion to help fix abuse wrought by uncontrolled industrial development.

Joshua Mahan

Joshua Mahan was immersed in the big wilds at a very early age by his Mom, Marilyn Olsen, and his Step-Dad, Howie Wolke (Big Wild owners). He survived. Josh has a degree in Journalism with a minor in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana. When not in the wilds, he is a writer/freelance journalist and runs the cutting-edge environmental web magazine "Lowbagger.org". Josh has been a professional whitewater river guide for over a decade, guiding multi-day river trips on Idaho’s Salmon River among other places. He has periodically worked for Big Wild as an assistant guide since he was a teen-ager, and in more recent years as a guide. Josh is also an avid hunter, fly-fisherman and snowboarder. Despite being our youngest guide at 30, Josh’s vast reservoir of wilderness experience and training compliment his unusual wisdom to create the perfect Big Wild guide.

Steve McCoy

Steve McCoy has guided for Big Wild since the mid 1980’s, mostly in and around the wilds of Yellowstone. Steve has lived in Montana for over 30 years, including stints at the western and northeastern ends of Big Sky country. Nowadays, he and his wife, Diane, live in Lewistown, smack dab in the state’s center, where the island mountain ranges and the prairies merge. Steve’s conservation advocacy focuses upon protecting and expanding the wild habitats of this largely overlooked big and wide-open region. Nonetheless, Steve is dutifully employed as a school psychologist, but believe it or not he prefers to spend his time making fine furniture, playing his guitar, hunting and training hunting dogs, and above all else, fly-fishing. Steve’s son Dylan – who summers as a wilderness ranger and an occasional Big Wild assistant -- will soon graduate the University of Montana.

It is no wonder that over two-thirds of our clients are
"repeaters" from prior Big Wild trips!

Scheduled Trips 2009
Below, we've listed our trips by region. Trips listed under Yellowstone Backpacking are also listed under the state in which they occur. You'll find complete information on each trip by clicking on the regional heading above each section.

For a chronological list of our adventures, click here.

NOTE: Our Death Valley and Gila wilderness trips are offered only in odd numbered years. In even numbered years, our spring backpack trips are the Escalante Canyons and Grand Staircase backcountry areas of southern Utah.

List prices include our complete gear package and there is a $200 discount if you bring your own (see equipment list and/or questionnaire for details). Also, we offer a $100 discount for the second trip in a calendar year. Scheduled trips are for persons ages 16 and over. Exceptions to the age requirement will be made by us on a case-by-case basis.