Each year the WBC’s first outing is a car camp. This helps to ease first-timers into the camping experience and get them to test and try out the gear they will need for the upcoming backpacking trips.

This year I chose to do Fish Creek, lead by Jeff Marchand, one of the contributing authors to the Wilderness Basics book.

One of the other focal points of the car camp, and something that is given time on all outings, is the use of map and compass to know where you are at all times. This course has given me a lot more confidence on use of the compass with a map to navigate.

I’m still learning, but one tip they emphasize over and over is always maintain an awareness of where you are while you are hiking. The idea to start at a known point and recheck your progress as you hike. Typically you always know the location of the trailhead you are starting from. As you hike, continually reference the map and compare to what you see as to hike. If the trail you are on crosses a stream or other landmark on the map those also make for great points to reassess where you are.

The geology of the Fish Creek area is spectacular. You can see the forces of the earth at work here.

After setting up camp on the south fork of Fish Creek Wash we had lunch and then hiked to Elephant Knees.

Elephant Knees is one of several sloped hills in this area. One side is steep and the other is shallower. The upper layer of these hills contain tons of ancient shell fossils. Oyster shells and mollusk shells were scattered around the shallow side and occasionally at the foot of the steeper side. The whole area used to be a shallow sea.

The view from the top was spectacular that day. The image above is looking back north toward the slot canyon we drove through to get to this area.

On Sunday we visited the Wind Caves. It was a simple trail to hike up.

The formation is pretty cool to see. Soft sands hardened and then eroded over the the millennia.

If you have a high clearance vehicle (or know someone who does), I highly recommend driving out to this area and doing an overnight. It’s a beautiful area with a lot of great geology to enjoy.