The Devils Stairs/Alaska Basin loop in South Teton Canyon

The Jedediah Smith Wilderness covers 116,535 acres of wild mountain country along the west slope of the Teton range. It's a part of the huge Yellowstone ecosystem, an inter-connected complex of wilderness areas, National Park lands, and Forest Service land that sprawls out over 14,000,000 acres in the northwestern corner of Wyoming. Parts of the ecosystem are also in Idaho and Montana. It's the only place left in the lower 48 states where all of the species of animals that were here when Lewis and Clark explored the west are still present. Grizzly bears, wolves, bison, elk, wolverine, lynx, mountain lion, and a host of other critters call the region home.

There are about 287 miles of official trail inside the Jedediah Smith Wilderness, with thousands more on the connecting lands of the Yellowstone ecosystem.

The wilderness stretches north from Teton Pass, between Jackson Hole and Victor, Idaho, to Lake of the Woods, just south of Yellowstone National Park. There it is connected to the primitive Winegar Hole Wilderness, a truly wild 10,600 acre spot of land with only one official trail. North of that - Yellowstone.

This photo shows the lower meadows along the Alaska Basin trail.