Very Good Opinion Piece Reguarding MT N. F.

[BigHornRam]

No pics Hangar. Miner Lakes trail. Suspension parts so it must of been a rough ride! I've come across a number of parts....mostly windshields in the Cooke City area. Ever ride there? I've thought about it, but the number of avalanche victims in Cooke every year spooks me.

 

[Hangar18]

First place I would check for the owners of the missing parts are the local rental shops. The people I know that ride there are so anal about their sleds that they will take the broken parts home to WA or Minn or Sask/Alberta to figure out what happened. For them it is usually engines that break long before suspensions go and windshields fall off.

Never ridden in Cooke. Some friends of mine from the Midwest and Canada roll in there every New Years among half a dozen other times to test their latest mod creations. One guy I know here in Boise was in on an avy rescue last new years where they successfully pulled a guy from Union Bay Racing out of a slide.

The key to staying out of an avy lies between your ears. We all wear beacons and carry shovels and probes, but also know they are for the most part recovery rather than rescue devices. So you can go riding around Cooke; the key is staying out of the danger areas (like Sheep Creek) and off the slopes altogether during certain conditions (like high windloading) and times of year. The locals at Cooke City Sinclair and the Alpine Motel can cover all that very well.

 

[1_pointer]

I am for more new wilderness, but would like to see things other than 'goat rocks' being put into wilderness. A wilderness area that goes from sagebrush flats/hills through all the different veg types to the goat rocks would be cool. My problem is that we don't have more of the more productive land in wilderness.

I can't say that I would be against a newly designated wilderness now, anywhere if it still has wilderness characteristics. The newly designated Cedar Mtns wilderness in No. UT is a joke. Mostly a range full of cheatgrass and was mostly only formed to stop/slow importation of nuke waste to the nearby indian reservation. To me that's not worth the paper the document was printed on.

Wilderness designation could be reversed in the future if the resources there were 'needed'. However, you can't make more land with wilderness characteristics.