About Us

33 years of extraordinary backpacking in Montana and Alaska

High Country Adventures offers 7 and 12 day backpacking trips in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana as well as trips to Alaska. The various skills of the guides and helpers make the trips an enjoyable learning adventure. We emphasize high quality times which will be remembered long after the trip has ended. We supply transportation to and from the trail head from the nearest commercial airport, all food, community gear, and rental packages (sleeping bag, sleeping pad, backpack, two-person tent) for those who need them.

About Bill and Polly Cunningham

Bill Cunningham has been involved with High Country Adventures for over 30 years, and has been a partner for over 20. Bill's wife Polly became a partner in 2005.

Bill has a long history of environmental involvement as a staffer with The Wilderness Society, Montana Wilderness Association, and American Wildlands. He too has backpacked in Europe, New Zealand, Canada, Alaska, and throughout the West. He teaches wilderness courses through the University of Montana, has written several wilderness guidebooks, and writes a Wild Country column for Montana Magazine.

Polly Cunningham has been assisting on our trips in addition to designing menus and planning logistics for the past 10 years. She and Bill have co-authored several hiking guidebooks. Bill and Polly live in Choteau, MT, where they enjoy this wild country year-round.

We are the only licensed backpacking outfitter in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, which is widely known as the "flagship of America's wilderness fleet".

Email is a great way to reach us: billpoll@3rivers.net

About Maggie Carr

Maggie grew up along the Rocky Mountain Front. After high school, she participated in an AmeriCorps program in Washington D.C. Then she moved back to Montana to study Rangeland Management at Montana State University. Upon completing her degree, she returned home to Choteau. In recent years, Maggie has worked for the Unites States Forest Service in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and as a wrangler for a guest ranch along the Front. Both of these jobs have influenced her desire to share these magnificent places with others and to continue working in the great outdoors. She looks forward to meeting great new people and showing them beautiful country. In her free time, Maggie likes to play with her dog, work with her horses, read, ski and laugh at good (or bad) jokes. She has also spent a bit of time in New Zealand learning about the sheep business from the Kiwis.

About Yve Bardwell

I grew up in Montana where spending time in the outdoors was a big part of spending time with my family. This practice became a passion once I left home and began discovering nature for myself. It has become a pursuit that has helped inform much of my life.

I received a degree in hydrology from the University of Montana and have had the opportunity to center the majority of my work around field science. I have had a variety of fieldwork that has kept me learning and exploring first hand. This has included such things as doing rangeland inventories for the Farm Service Agency, to tracking wolves in the Italian Alps, surveying for lahontan cutthroat in the High Sierras, to guiding river trips on the White Cliffs of the Missouri. I met my husband while working in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and he has been responsible for teaching me the ways of the horse and using them as a means of backcountry travel and a way of life at our home in Choteau.

I have been fortunate to follow my dreams as closely as I know how and am excited about this opportunity to work with Bill and Polly. I look forward to continuing to explore our big backyard and this beautiful state as well as learning from the people, the places, the flora and the fauna.