After four decades of backpacking and climbing in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, 75-year-old Joe Kelsey is living proof that, while time may stop for no one, it might just slow down for hikers. Kelsey is the keeper of records for these remote mountains.
A climber and backcountry explorer by craft and a writer by temperament, Kelsey has been meticulously cataloging information about the Winds from alpinists, backpackers, fishermen, cowboys, and horsepackers for 40 years—often fact-checking it on the ground himself.
Kelsey’s third edition of Climbing and Hiking in the Wind River Mountains, the local bible for backpackers and mountaineers alike, was published last year. He said he thinks it will be his last (19 years passed between the second and third editions; the first was published in 1981).
No one else on earth has Kelsey’s knowledge of the Winds. The trails that are impassable due to deadfall, the lakes that still have indigenous brookies, the granite spires that remain unclimbed. If the measure of a man’s life is his lasting contribution to his community, Kelsey’s achievement can’t be underestimated: All those who care about the Winds, one of the greatest ranges in the world, owe him a debt of gratitude.
Kelsey moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he bought a cabin with no electricity and no running water. Forty-two years later, it still has neither, and Kelsey still lives there half the year, spending the cold part in Bishop, California, wandering the Sierra.
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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