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Site Descriptions

All descriptions fall far short of the beauty and magnificence of these areas. Each is stunning in its own ways. Earth, air, fire, and water weave themselves together in infinite varieties of landscape. What is temporal or eternal, personal or transcendent is revealed in differing features, textures, and balances. We hope these few words are helpful and speak to your heart and imagination as much as your reason.

Death Valley

Southeastern California

(March) Immense, grand vistas, Gold Rush stories, geological oddities. Graveled washes in rocky canyons, sand dunes, vast sky, stillness, sparse vegetation. Time stretching into the distance, brilliant stars... silence punctuated by coyote or raven...

Before and after the solo we'll camp beside clear mountain streams as the snow-capped Sierras tower overhead. Thermal pools offer their welcoming warmth a short distance away. This lush oasis will serve as our beginning and return as we journey to the vast, starkly beautiful panoramas of the desert called Death Valley.

Death Valley

New Mexico Quests

Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness, Southwestern New Mexico

(April and October) A rich and diverse intermingling of mountain, desert, and river ecologies. This is an area of stunning diversity, and home to ancient peoples who mysteriously disappeared 800 years ago.

Grand cottonwoods, oaks, and other deciduous trees thrive alongside ponderosa pine forests and the pinion-juniper cactus zone characteristic of high desert. Rugged mountains descend through dry grass and wildflower meadows to lush river-bottom land. Hot springs and geothermal energy abounds. Incredibly rich in animal life: deer, mule deer, turkeys, wild boar, and elk are common.

New Mexico Quests - Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness

Pecos Wilderness, Northern New Mexico

Mix of lush alpine meadows, stands of aspen, ponderosa pine, and spruce. Summer wildflowers, grand views with high peaks all around. Deep cut valleys with mountain streams. Deer and occasional elk. Deep blue skies as towering cumulus build throughout the day. High country quest.... elevations ranging from 8500 to 10,000 ft.

New Mexico Quests - Pecos Wilderness

Chama Wilderness, Northern New Mexico

This stunning mesa-canyon country fits the image of the classic Southwest. Vertical red-rock cliffs striped in a Georgia O'Keefe palette frame the valley. You can expect bright sunshine, brilliant stars, cicadas singing, and an occasional summer thunderstorm.

The canyons are remarkably diverse... becoming more lush and forested the farther in one journeys. The landscape hosts pinon, cedar, mule deer, canyon wrens, and coyotes howling in the night. Wildflowers thrust themselves up amidst sage fields, prickly pear and cholla cactus bloom. Our pre- and post quest time will be spent at our camp next to the river.

New Mexico Quests - Chama Wilderness

Vermont Quests

(May, late August, September) Rolling hills and mountains, lush, fertile woodlands, streams, and lakes. Loons calling at dusk, owls hooting, morning mist rising from the water. Moose, moss-covered boulders, beaver ponds, mirrored lake reflecting mountain and sky. Islands emerging from fog, spring wildflowers, gold and crimson leaves in fall. Honking geese, quacking ducks, eagle and osprey diving for fish.

Vermont Quests