Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness

Frank Church
River of No Return Wilderness was created by Congress in 1980. Perhaps the greatest success of Idaho conservationists, it is the single largest designated wilderness area in the lower 48 states.
It is almost 2.4 million acres in extent, covering a vast array of ridges, deep canyons, glaciated peaks, meadows, and one large rolling plateau -- the Chamberlain Basin which covers 500 square miles.

 

 

Located entirely in the vast Salmon River Mountains, it embraces a portion of the largest continuously mountainous terrain in the United States. Over 3,000 miles of trails provide access inside the Wilderness. The FC-RNR Wilderness is full of wildlife, especially elk, but also mule and while-tailed deer, moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, black bear, coyotes, bobcat, numerous cougar, pine marten, wolverine, a few lynx, and grey wolves. Only the grizzly bear is lacking. Because the altitude ranges from 2,000 or 3,000 feet in the deepest canyons to over 10,000 feet on the peaks, year round range for wildlife is provided. Elk, deer and moose do not need to migrate out of the wilderness to winter range near Idaho towns and cities. After the death of Senator Frank Church in 1982, Idaho Senator Jim McClure had Congress rename the wilderness the "Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness" in honor of the late senator Church's support for preserving this wild core of the Idaho mountains. The "Frank" is separated from the 1.3 million acre Selway/Bitterroot Wilderness, to its immediate north, by one dirt road -- the Magruder road. Of course, this track is no barrier to wolf migration. Most of the reintroduced wolves have spent time in both great wilderness areas -- the heart of Idaho.

The beginnings of the establishment of this wilderness came in the 1930s, when the U.S. Forest Service set aside over one million acres through its administrative authority and named it the "Idaho Primitive Area." Sixteen years after the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, the United States Congress established the River of No Return Wilderness from the Idaho Primitive Area, the adjacent Salmon River Breaks Primitive Area and othjer surrounding roadless public lands. Thirty-six wolves were reintroduced into the Frank Church Wilderness during January 1995 and 1996. As a result, hubndreds of wolves now roam the FC-RNR Wilderness, the Selway/Bitterroot Wilderness to the north, and adjacent country. At the end of 2003, 32 groups or wolf packs roamed Idaho, and about 15 of them used all of part of the FR-RNR or Selway-Bitterroot Wildernesses.

Two Wild and Scenic Rivers, the Salmon and the Middle Fork of the Salmon, flow through the Wilderness. Both rivers are popular with white-water kayakers and rafters. The headwaters of the Wild and Scenic Selway River lie in the northern-most part of the Frank Church too. The Wilderness covers parts of numerous national forests -- the Bitterroot, Boise, Salmon-Challis, Nez Perce, and Payette National Forests. With the additional exception of a few popular high lakes areas and the two river corridors, most of the Wilderness sees very little human use except from hunters in the fall.

Beginning in 1980, the number of wildfires inside the Frank began to increase. The greatest fire season was 2000 when wildfires caused the evacuation of the Frank for the first time in its history. Because heavy equipment was not used to suppress the fires, the wilderness quality of the area will not suffer, although some drainages like the long Pistol Creek drainage burned almost entirely. In 2001, the year after the fires, the usual flush of ground cover regeneration was not seen because the drought lingered on and deepened. There were additional fires as well. 2004 however, saw the end of the drought, except in a hydrological sense, and the grass and forbs grew high among the burned trees, and the elk population started rebounding.

Further reading~

• Salmon Sojourn Kathleen and Rob J. recount their tale of volunteering in the Frank Church
• Notes On The Flora Of The Middle Fork By: Cleve Davis photographer
• Bighorn Crags photos

USFS links

• Frank Church River of No Return Management Plan, Final Environmental Impact Statement Click on this link to view the Decision Documents (ROD), Management Plan, FEIS and errata sheets.
• Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Noxious Weed Treatment Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement - April 2004
• Frankly Speaking August 30, 2003 A summary of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.
• Frankly Speaking July 31, 2003 The document announcing Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

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Gospel Hump Wilderness

Location

The United States Congress designated the Gospel-Hump Wilderness in 1978 and it now has a total of 205,796 acres. It is managed by the US Forest Service. They define it as : "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain...."

 

Gospel Hump Wilderness Area

Thousands of years before Lewis and Clark first laid eyes on this region in 1805, Nez Perce Indians (Nimíipuu) were living in harmony with the land, cultivating berries, local plants, making beautiful things to make their lives comfortable and yes, hunting the great salmon, elk, deer, and (rarely) black bears whose descendants still roam here - while today the Nimíipuu languish in marginalized pockets of land representing less than 10% of their original promised treaty area (which itself was an insignificant fraction of their ancestral territory) Westerners argue and fight about driving destructive "recreational" vehicles through pristine habitat for Endagered species.

Discovery of gold in the 1860s brought a flood of miners into central Idaho that didn't subside until after the turn of the century. Another brief gold rush occurred during the Great Depression, remnants of gold mining operations are evident in the acid drenched hillsides and water canon eroded mountains, arsenic poisoned children and lead filled nature.

Elevations in the Gospel-Hump Wilderness range from 1,970 feet at the Wind River pack bridge on the Salmon River to 8,940 feet at the summit of Buffalo Hump. The northern portion contains relatively gentle, heavily forested country that sweeps up the glaciated divide between the South Fork of the Clearwater River and the lower Salmon River, which flows out of the nearby Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness. From the divide, the terrain becomes the steep and sparsely vegetated along the Salmon River Breaks. Moose, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, wolves and anadromous fish live here. The area sees extreme variations in weather, with temperatures sometimes soaring to 100 degrees Fahrenheit along the Salmon River as snow whitens the high country.

Seasonal roads of fair to poor quality surround the Wilderness, offering access to trails that lead from the Salmon River Breaks into the high country, which many hikers would classify as very challenging, and are often impassable due to late snows. Fortunately, it is very difficult to build roads here, so the wilderness has remained fairly intact in this region. The northern part of the Wilderness is moist and heavily forested the southern part is dry and sparsely vegetated. The two parts are separated by a rugged, glaciated divide which contains the peaks for which the wilderness is named.

• Gospel Hump Brochure from the US Forest Service (.pdf download)

Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness

Introduction

The United States Congress designated the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in 1964 and it now has a total of 1,340,502 acres. Idaho contains approximately 1,089,059 acres. Montana contains approximately 251,443 acres. It is managed by the United States Forest Service.

Selway Bitterroot Wilderness

Selway-Bitterroot is the third largest Wilderness in the Lower 48, surpassed in size only by California's Death Valley Wilderness and Idaho's Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (RONR). Less than one-fifth of the area lies in Montana. Only the 600-foot-wide Nez Perce Trail (The Magruder Corridor), an unimproved dirt road, separates the Selway-Bitterroot from the Frank Church-RONR.

The Wilderness straddles both sides of the Bitterroot Range, which stands along the Montana-Idaho border and includes the Wild and Scenic Selway River, all of which flows through Idaho. This vast wildland is one of the roughest mountain areas on earth, a country of high ridges dropping off into steep-walled canyons. The barren peaks don't hint at the dense forests below, where a number of streams and more than 100 lakes offer excellent trout fishing. Hardly any humans visit the huge trailless portions of this Wilderness, which makes it all the more appealing for the large Selway elk herd, plus deer, moose, black bears, and mountain lions.

Many miles of trails provide access to the Montana side of the Selway-Bitterroot, but large sections are unmaintained and rugged. The Divide Trail (Trail 16) follows the Bitterroot Divide for approximately seven miles north of Nez Perce Pass, offering outstanding views across the Montana and Idaho portions of the Wilderness.