JACKSON HOLE, WYO – The Wind River Range. Joe Kelsey wrote the book on it. No, really, he did. Several, in fact.
If you’ve hiked or climbed in the Wind River Range in the past 48 years, you’ve probably shared a campsite or been tied to a rope with Joe Kelsey, or at least have had one of his guidebooks in your pack.
For nearly four decades Kelsey has been a mainstay in the Winds, along with an ever-present Golden Retriever or two. The locally-based writer has authored numerous guide books on the area including his latest: A Place in Which to Search, Summer in the Wind Rivers.
Kelsey will share photos and stories from his book, which chronicles adventures and misadventures of his years journeying in the Winds. Books will be available for purchase and an author signing will follow.
Author Paula Wright wrote of Kelsey: “In August 1969, Joe Kelsey set out alone to hike eight dusty miles into the mountains from Big Sandy Opening. In this inaugural trip to the Wind River Range, Kelsey missed a switchback at Jackass Pass and wandered into a meadow of tumbled granite, not knowing he was lost. He soon regained the trail to Lonesome Lake, and next morning, he writes, ‘I woke up…knowing I had come home.’
Kelsey has spent every summer since then in the Wind Rivers, where he first encountered ‘a place in which to search.’ The title hearkens back to the records of a 16th-century Spanish expedition across the West: ‘They did not find the riches of which they had been told, they found a place in which to search for them…Now when it is too late they enjoy telling about what they saw, and even of what they realize they lost.’”
Writing the West series will feature Joe Kelsey on Monday, September 25, at 6pm in the Library’s Ordway Auditorium.
