Real Wilderness People Don’t Wear Waffle-Stompers

Putting aside waffle-stompers for now, next Sunday’s Earth Day has had at least one significant impact on the American wilderness since it was first observed 20 years ago.

When I started wandering the Sierra in the 1960s, non-ever-decomposable filter cigarette butts littered every trail. As an embarrassed smoker myself, I started pocketing them as I hiked along. Then I began carrying little plastic bags to hold the foul things. A hike of just a few hours would fill the bag. Sometimes it seemed I was doomed to trek behind a whole crew of Humphrey Bogarts.

There’s been a dramatic change. It’s rare to find a discarded cigarette butt these days, even along the most popular Sierra trails. That’s one small triumph for the wilderness, as well as for humankind.

The wilderness did not become fashionable April 22, 1970. When I first started visiting the Sierra backcountry, some of the popular areas were already overrun and abused. The most heavily traveled regions, naturally, were those close to access roads, requiring little physical effort or determination to reach.

But there was Stall’s Law covering people, cigarette butts, orange peels, beer cans in streams, giant logs hauled across campfires and left barely singed, live trees denuded by hand axes or anything else: The opportunity for a pleasant wilderness experience increased in direct, accelerating proportion to the square of the distance to the nearest road. The farther from the road, the more likely wilderness really would be wilderness. And people who had made the effort to get that far were more likely to be real wilderness people who would treat the backcountry gently and with respect.

In those days, only a few people wore boots with the lugged Vibram sole. Come across a Vibram track in the trail and chances were it belonged to some climbing friend or acquaintance, or a friend of a friend. Wilderness lovers did not wear badges of distinction on their sleeves. Their badge was that cluster of lugs and the bright little yellow Vibram brand label just under the instep.

There were other trademarks, though. Real wilderness travelers always had a baggy down jacket and a parka--what the mountaineers used to call an anarok --usually in bright orange. This color, now found mostly on life jackets, was supposed to be visible in case of a search and rescue. If you wanted to be saved, you did not want to look like a rock.

To be with it, you referred to your down jacket as a duvet , the French mountaineer’s term. Serious wilderness people shunned the lowly but versatile poncho. Ponchos could be bought at Wards and were really no protection against sustained rain with their yawning gaps between snaps. A real mountain person, before the Gore-Tex revolution, had a cagoule , which literally was “monk’s cloak” and actually was a long anarok . Unlike the well-ventilated poncho, this all-embracing waterproof garment created an instant sauna under any amount of exertion. Rarely did my friends and I ever get caught out overnight up among the peaks, but just in case, we had to have a cagoule for the bivouac.

Pre-Earth Day people like me finally became too embarrassed to wear army boots into the wilderness and got real hiking footwear, usually from REI in Seattle by mail order. The old eight-pound pup tent (20 pounds wet) gave way to the new nylon A-frames made by outfits like Sierra Design and North Face. So, too, with the lumpy old olive-drab, duck-feather surplus bag.

The problem was going into the wilderness with everything looking too new. Some rumpled veteran passing on the trail would grunt a friendly hello, but you knew the stranger was sneering inwardly at this tenderfoot with all that new-fangled gear. You had to give the new equipment that broken-in look as soon as possible. Some of my friends were even known to rub dirt and pebbles on a new pack to give it a healthy used look.

But then came Woodstock, Earth Day and all that ecological awareness. Almost overnight, everyone was wearing boots with Vibram soles, some that never touched granite or good trail dirt outside of Westwood or Berkeley. Worse yet, they called them “waffle-stompers.” Why not, at least, gaufre le bruit lourd ?

College campuses blossomed into a riot of down jackets. The Sierra Design 60/40 Mountain Parka became a trademark of not just the wilderness but of antiwar rallies and coffee shops.

My generation got waffle-stomped. For a while, we let our stuff get as worn and tattered as possible so anyone could see at a glance that we were not latter-day Sierra Nevadans. We slung our Perlon ropes and slings of climbing hardware casually over shoulders, whether we were going climbing or not. We abandoned international orange for natural colors that blended into the mountains--greens, blues, tans. Before long, their stuff was just as tattered. Their hair and beards were longer. Their parkas just as tan, or even rust. They took up rock climbing and did better at it. They had become us and there were too many of us.

In 1973 the U.S. Forest Service began restricting access to the wilderness for the first time, setting quotas during the summer season on the Mt. Whitney trail. Thousands apply yearly for trail passes; many have to settle for an alternate trail or try again next year. The Whitney Trail corridor, if not recovered, at least is being protected from heavier damage. There are few complaints, says Charlie Robinson, a ranger at Lone Pine.

“The people believe in the system,” he added, but noted that thoughtless dayhikers are still prone to leave behind bags of unused charcoal briquettes after picnics at Lone Pine Lake.

Even the waffle-stomper is out of style these days with wilderness purists, who argue that the heavy lugs unnecessarily damage trails and meadows. Fashionable backpacking footwear now is more like a running shoe, with a thin, unlugged sole. I now have not one, but two pairs of these shoes. And a new down jacket from Patagonia, the most haute of American outdoors haute couture. It’s blue. It is also obviously new, but after it gets mussed up a bit and perhaps has a couple tears mended with duct tape, it’ll be just fine.