One of the Wilderness areas I haven’t spent much time in is Utah’s largest, the High Uintas Wilderness, which embraces much of this unique 13,000 foot plus east/west uplift (almost all of the Rocky Mountains run north/south).

The Wilderness is very popular in Utah with a few trailheads very crowded. I long wondered why most of the others were not, and Dr. John Carter of the Western Watersheds Project has provided some of the answer as well as revealing a dark underside of the compromises that were made to pass the Wilderness Act back in 1964–livestock grazing was grandfathered into Wilderness areas where it was already established.

Much of the High Uintas Wilderness is devastated by domestic sheep grazing. It’s remote country, but the influence of livestock, especially sheep is dramatic all the way to the rock line at 11,000 feet or more. In some of the big glaciated drainages there isn’t a drop of unpolluted water. Now the Western Watersheds Project has put out a report documenting the devastatation in detail.