Johnson named NPS wilderness champion

When Kyle Johnson wasn't playing sports at Columbia Falls High School, he was out in the woods hunting and fishing with his friends and family.

That passion for the woods - and its preservation - was recently recognized as he received the National Park Service Intermountain Region Wilderness Champion Award.

Johnson is Glacier National Park's wilderness specialist. He developed and instructs the Park's interagency wilderness training for backcountry rangers and volunteers and worked with the University of Montana to create the successful wilderness ranger internship position at the Park.

In addition, he oversees the Park's backcountry permit program and is a leader in teaching Leave-No-Trace principles and practices. He also assists in search-and-rescue missions and other Park ranger duties.

A standout athlete in basketball and football, Johnson graduated from Columbia Falls High School in 1980. He began working in Glacier Park as a seasonal employee in 1982 as a laborer doing stone masonry work on the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

In ensuing years, he worked on the Park's snowplowing crew as an avalanche spotter. In 1984, he graduated from Montana State University with a bachelor's in land resource management and range science. In 1986, he hired on as the Belly River law enforcement ranger.

"It was a $4 an hour pay cut" from the road crew work, he recalled.

But the Belly River is a special place, with broad valleys and towering peaks - a true wilderness. Johnson was involved in the rescue of a man who had fallen off a horse near the head of Elizabeth Lake. On the helicopter ride out, the man remarked that he had been coming to Glacier Park every year for decades.

Johnson asked him if much had changed. The man so no, it was pretty much the same as when he was a kid. For a wilderness manager, those are sweet words. It means the landscape is doing well, even with human influences.

From the Belly River, Johnson moved to ranger positions in the North Fork, at Walton and then in a separate wilderness management unit under Roger Semler. When Semler left, Johnson took over as wilderness manager in 2000, a position he's held ever since.

Today the Park takes great pains to teach Leave-No-Trace principles to backcountry users - visitors should leave only footprints and take only pictures. But there are practical aspects as well. Backcountry campgrounds are standardized in Glacier Park - there's always a specific spot to pitch a tent, store food away from bears and go to the bathroom.

Johnson has hiked most of the trails in Glacier Park - including a few that no longer exist. Fielding Coal Creek Trail is one he hasn't hiked. He also does one long winter excursion each year. One year, he went up and over Brown's Pass down to Goat Haunt and followed the Continental Divide to Mineral Creek, then on to Packer's Roost and out on the Sun Road back to West Glacier.

In the past few years, there's been a push to formally designate much of Glacier Park as wilderness, which has been met with some opposition. Johnson said it's not a bad idea.

"It gives us an added layer of protection," he said.

The Park manages most of its lands as wilderness under National Park Service policy, but without permanent protection, it could conceivably be managed differently. Most of Glacier Park was set aside as recommended wilderness under the Nixon administration.

Johnson has a wife, Mary and two children, Parker and Ellie. It's been a great career so far, he said.

"It's been a pleasure to work in Glacier," he said. "As far as conservation goes, it's a pretty easy sell."