MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE
Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS) – Our Classroom
Boulder Mountain rises to over 11,000’ and is the highest forested plateau in the continental United States. The sheer cliffs of the escarpment encircling the plateau towers over aspen-covered slopes which plunge down into the surrounding desert. This extinct volcano’s mass and elevation generate their own weather. Lush meadows and cold alpine lakes and streams offer a stark contrast to the sun-baked sandstone below.
Rugged escarpments, alpine meadows, and remote beauty.
Climbing from base to summit plateau, you move through many forests (possible in a single day): Piñon pine and juniper forest interspersed with sagebrush, ponderosa pine forest, massive aspen groves, and on the summit plateau, spruce-fir forest. Each is laced through with cool, rocky streams fed by the mountain’s unique weather patterns.
Boulder Mountain is primarily public land, and is managed by the Forest Service. It is common to see roaming herds of cattle in the alpine meadows.
A Famous Landscape
This is part of the landscape that Wallace Stegner so famously argued to protect in his Wilderness Letter in 1960, which became instrumental in the drafting and passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964.
