INTRODUCTION 



The rugged north face of 

 Cray Wolf Peak as viewed 

 from across the head of 

 Gray Wolf Lake. 



Wilderness is a fragile resource in both an ecological and an esthetic sense. 

 Management of wilderness faces the difficult challenge of providing for the use of 

 these areas while preserving the substantially unmodified ecosystem and the outstanding 

 opportunities for solitude that are the essential characteristics of wilderness. 



The impact of use on the wilderness resource cannot be understood or managed 

 adequately without knowledge about the level and nature of that use. Many decisions 

 need to be based on use data, for example, control of use by people and their horses, 

 redistribution of use pressures, trail construction and maintenance, litter cleanup, 

 campsite closures and rehabilitation, planning patrol routes for Wilderness Rangers, 

 and minimizing conflicts between grazing and recreational use. Such decisions are 

 hampered by the poor quality of wilderness recreation use estimates--among the poorest 

 of recreation use data. 



It is difficult to estimate wilderness use with even modest accuracy for obvious 

 reasons. Wilderness visitors are highly mobile and are scattered widely over large 

 areas, away from roads where observation and counting are easy. Users m9.y enter a 

 wilderness at many access points; several wildernesses have over 60 entrances. 



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