Experience the antiquities of the Southwest at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.
Photo: Ashley Wise
New Mexico’s Gila Range is the birthplace of the American concept of wilderness, protected by Congress 40 years before the Wilderness Act was passed in 1964.
The Gila today remains the same as it was then, a wild place of amazing contrasts and abundance. You’ll live here for 28 days, hiking beneath the same tall pines and up the same deep canyons that inspired the wilderness concept.
On some days you’ll start on a snow-covered peak and arrive in a warm desert canyon at day’s end, the same canyons inhabited 900 years ago by the Mimbres culture and 100 years ago by the Apache. They chose this wild place for many of the same reasons you will: its beauty, abundant animal and plant life, fantastic variety of terrain, and, most of all, its power to inspire the spirit.
Due to current economic conditions, NOLS is not offering Gila Range Backpacking in 2009. There are many other summer courses available here.
Navigating through its most remote
reaches, you’ll see why the Gila Range was set aside as wilderness
40 years before Congress passed the Wilderness Act.
Photo: Chris Hatton
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NOLS Semester in the Southwest
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