Caribou Gear

Who can't enjoy Wilderness without an ATV?

Ithaca 37

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BLUE BUNCH TRAIL — It takes only a few steps into one of Idaho's wilderness areas to get that feeling.

That feeling is freedom — from exhaust fumes, honking horns, buzzing cell phones, beeping handheld computers and tailgating, cussing drivers. It's freedom from neon lights, traffic jams, and bulldozers scaring a lush green carpet of pines and firs with eroding roadcuts. You know — today's cut-it-down, dig-it-up, money-driven society.

It only takes a short hike into the wilderness to have everything slow down so you can even feel your blood pressure take a dip.

Last weekend I wanted to get a photo overlooking Bear Valley. I hiked a short ways up the Blue Bunch Trail into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

I wasn't on a five-day backpacking trip. It was a stroll. I was in the wilderness, and I felt it.

You walk past the weather-stained wooden sign saying River of No Return Wilderness - Boise National Forest. After a few steps on the other side of the sign, that feeling of being out of the rat race and in a peaceful place starts to set in.

All you can hear are the gurgling sounds of Bear Valley Creek as you walk the well-worn pathway through a canopy of pine and fir. The thick stand of timber insulates the area from the sounds of Bear Valley Road, which is a mile or so away.

It doesn't take more than a 15-minute stroll past bleached-gray granite boulders and brilliant white, blue and scarlet wildflowers to get to a quiet spot.

There are no sounds except for the chattering of the songbirds that are darting all over the place.

You sit down on a log and just think about how lucky we are that the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness was established in 1980. The wilderness designation was established by the Wilderness Act of 1964, which calls wilderness "an area where the Earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

Wilderness is to be managed "for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness . . ."

Thank heavens Congress had the foresight to pass the Wilderness Act.

It doesn't take much to experience wilderness. OK, so where am I going with this? A lot of folks call wilderness the land of no use. They're under the impression that it takes a three-day pack trip, a week-long backpacking trip or a six-day river trip to enjoy wilderness, and that limits a lot of people and keeps some people out entirely.

On this hike last weekend, I realized that's not the case.

You can experience wilderness on a 100-foot or 100-yard stroll and with a nice little picnic. It doesn't take much. I remember when I was recovering from a broken leg a few years back and was in a walking-boot cast. I was able to hobble a few feet down the Marsh Creek trail in the Frank Church wilderness. It didn't take much distance across that wilderness boundary to enjoy the therapy of the wilds.

You cross the wilderness boundary and sit down on a weathered-gray log and look into the distance.

There's that feeling, where you can hear yourself think. You can meditate about the last of the few wild places that are left in this country, where there are no roads, no heavy machinery scraping the Earth's carpet down to bare, eroding sediment that will wash into streams and smother the spawning beds of steelhead, salmon and cutthroat trout, and no holding ponds containing toxic chemicals.

Right here in wilderness, the lush bunch grasses all around you are holding the soils in place as undisturbed vegetation has done so for thousands of years.

Wilderness is not a land of no use. Besides hiking, fishing, hunting, rafting, picnicking and horseback riding, there is strolling and peace of mind.

But more deeply than recreation, wilderness is a place that provides protection for our valuable watersheds. It's where melting snow filters through the soil and provides clean water in wilderness rivers and streams and eventually into our farmlands and into the city drinking water.

Wilderness is the ultimate protection and haven for wildlife. Just look at the number of elk in the Bear Valley area.

There isn't that much wilderness in Idaho. We have the Frank Church, Selway-Bitterroot, Hells Canyon, Gospel Hump, Sawtooth and Craters of the Moon wilderness areas. Out of 53 million acres in the state, only a little more than 4 million are wilderness. That's not much.

Well, I sat on my rock and pondered the wilderness. You should do the same. Go out and enjoy it this weekend on a short stroll and picnic. There are hundreds of trailheads in Idaho wilderness areas where you can walk in a few hundred feet, sit on a log or rock and contemplate our lands the way they were hundreds of years ago.

There are still many, many acres that still need protection.


http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050703/IDOUT/507030342
 
Thanks for the read Ithica...

There is another place in N.W. Montana that is really well worth the trip,

Go to the Troy FS office and get the maps to Ceder Creek.

The trail is set up well enough wheel chairs can traverse, and those a little more hardy can follow the trail for miles into very wild back country.

The trees and plants in this area remind me exactly of every thing I see hiking in the Olympics.

Western Red Ceder that are 6+ feet thru, old hemlocks every where and an extreme deep woods atmospher...

Well worth the effort for even those that only like the back country wilderness areas.

:)
 
Well written, overdramatized, story. You can get the same "wilderness" feeling getting the same distance from roads in north idaho, but without the "wilderness" designations. :rolleyes: Wilderness isn't all land of no use, but it isn't the wilderness of thousands of years ago either. My last trip into the Frank Church was a packtrip that took us from one airstrip to another, those things are everywhere in there.
 
The designation of wilderness provides something that your trip into the Idaho wilds does not...The idea that once designated as wilderness it is protected and should stay that way for a very long time. If it isn't designated it can be touched and that area you frequent can become a clearcut or a gold mine. It's not just the feeling you get from being in an area, it's the knowledge you can achieve that feeling over and over again without the fear of man made change...
 
Easy answer...future generations when the outdoors is totally messed up by greed and stupidity.

I would ask: What kind of a moron would ask such a dumb question like Ten Beers just asked?
 
Wilderness is a good thing.
As Ithaca's post pointed out we have quite a bit of wilderness in Idaho that can be accessed pretty easy.
The point worth debating is how much is to much??????
And why is it that some people still think multiple use should not include ATV's ,snowmachine's ,motorcycle's??
I am a firm belivere in something for everyone and letting people decide for themself what type of outdoor experience is right for them.
It's a blessing that I can use a truck to haul the ATV's into a camp area,then ride them to a trail head and head into the wilderness area on foot,or use many of the ATV trail we now enjoy.
The sad fact is that there are a vocal few that hate the fact that ATV's,Motorcycle & Snowmachines are even allowed on our public land's.

Keep up the debate guy's .
 
Thanks Ten Bears,Im still around.
Keeping on the wilderness debate ,I wonder how many people use a wilderness area over area's that are more user friendly?

Like it or not todays world is faster paced.
So while I do see the need for wilderness areas and protected area's so we can get away from the hustle and bustle of fast paced ,on the other hand I know there is the need areas --------------
We can access at different levels with different uses for people that dont have the time ,knowledge,money or level it takes to get into a wilderness area.


("You can experience wilderness on a 100-foot or 100-yard stroll and with a nice little picnic")

Some of us like to have more options open.
While our family would have fun once in a while taking a 100-yard stroll to a picnic spot ,I have to be honest in saying that for the most part my grandkids need more to do then that.
We enjoy being able to take the camp trailer or tent ,ATV ,Mt. bikes, the fishing poles,
Babies to grandparents and getting in a little bit of everything.
 
That's why I asked:
Who can't enjoy the outdoors without Wilderness designation?
I agree that having some wilderness areas is good, but, like you say MD4M, it all doesn't need to all be designated wilderness.
 
It makes it easier for the FS to take care of it if they don't have to do any thing but have their people wander in, check things out and come out..

It just goes to show they don't want to do any thing for what they are paid for if they can get away with it... ;)
 
I wonder how many people use a wilderness area over area's that are more user friendly?
Access aside, how many more people would use wilderness if the majority of it wasn't only rock and ice?? My biggest gripe with the lack of wilderness is that most all that is designated are mountain tops or the roughest country around. Why not have wilderness designated sagebrush flats or oak foothills? Why not have some of the more productive areas designated as wilderness? I'm still all for more wilderness.

It just goes to show they don't want to do any thing for what they are paid for if they can get away with it...
Or maybe the current administration has cut budgets so bad that there's not money available for more work?
 
1_pointer said:
Or maybe the current administration has cut budgets so bad that there's not money available for more work?
Or maybe there are so many enviro lawsuits eating up the diminishing budgets that agencies can't get the people to the areas where the work really needs to be getting done in order to correctly manage the resources to prevent future lawsuits?
 
TB- Maybe if they followed the correct procedures there wouldn't be as many law suits...
 
MATTy, maybe if there weren't as many lawsuits they could actually afford to do their work. See the self perpetuating loop developing here?
 
TB- I do see a loop. One of the two will have to stop the loop. If they follow the laws they are supposed to, the loop will break.
 
Unfortunately, in some cases they can't afford to do the required work because the people that would do the work are busy collecting information (free) for the lawyers suing the agency, and not doing the work in the field, and alas, as things are left undone in the field, more lawsuits are born. A better source of information on that issue would be 1-P, where I can only relay things I've been told on the matter, I believe 1-P has lived it, maybe you should ask him.
If they follow the laws they are supposed to, the loop will break.
Do you really think the lawyers and suit happy enviro groups are gonna let go of a cash cow like that and go looking for another, not hardly, they're gonna hold onto that one as long as they can.
MATTy, is the glass half empty or half full? Can you enjoy the outdoors with it being designated as wilderness, or do you only go to wilderness to recreate?
 
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