Happy Trails to You
(Still needs work)

 

 

“Leave the road, take the trails,” pronounced the mathematician Pythagoras more than two thousand years ago. Had I known his fascination with Trails, I might have paid more attention in geometry class to the man who unlocked the secrets of the right triangle.

 

Trails have always been part of the DNA of Idaho. The Nez Perce Trail, the Lewis & Clark Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Centennial Trail. They have all helped to define our State. One might even add the state's primary north–south highway to this list. Anyone who's driven it knows why the late Governor Andrus once called it Idaho's Goat Trail.

 

Some of the state's 16,000 miles of trails are in great shape; many others, not so much. And some have simply vanished, lost to wildfires, toppled trees, erosion, overgrown brush, and lack of attention. Since most of the trails are on federal land, the funding for trails is on a downward spiral. Many forest districts are forced to rely on Volunteers, just to keep their most popular trails open and usable. Outdoor Idaho has done several shows on the importance of volunteerism in the national forest.

 

For our 2020 "Sawtooths on My Mind" program, retired Trails Manager Jay Dorr spelled out part of the problem with trails. He called it the upside-down pyramid. "They add more stuff in the Supervisor's office or the Washington D.C. office, and cut positions on the ground where folks are actually doing stuff. It's always been that way." 

But things are even worse now, said the man who joined the Sawtooth National Recreation Area trails crew in 1971. "We used to get to most trails every few years and the high use trails every year. And now with less crews and the fires and bug kill, you don't get to a trail for four or five years. Instead of three miles of trail, you're doing half a mile of trails in a day. And the backlog just keeps getting bigger and bigger."

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Outdoor Idaho began exploring some of the controversial fault lines of trails in a 1991 show we called "The Politics of Trails.”  For part of that program, we set up a discussion with a hiker and a motorized trail biker at Fourth of July Lake, near the edge of the White Cloud mountains in central Idaho.  The lake is less than two miles from the trailhead, making it a favorite for a family hike. Lynn Stone hiked in, and Clark Collins rode in. Our camera was waiting in the rain. 

“You’re trying to tell me that the uses are all compatible,” said an incredulous Lynn Stone of the Idaho Conservation League. She had written a book about hiking the trails of the White Clouds. “And all I have to do is put up with the noise, plug no nose so I can’t smell the fumes, and jump out of the way of these machines whenever they come up, and I can live with you?”

Clark Collins was the executive director of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, whose goal was to protect trails for motorized users. “And on most of the trails, the level of use is such that it wouldn’t change your experience that much,” countered Clark. “There are only a few trails left available for motorized use. And it seems that we are continually being asked to give up access to those trails, with no compensation.”

Lynn Stone: “In Idaho, we have a chance in the Boulder-White Clouds to keep the peace and to keep the wild.”

Clark Collins: “And we’re willing to concede the majority of the Boulder-White Clouds to Wilderness designation, but we’re not willing to concede all of it.”

Lynn: “What about Fourth of July Lake trail, Clark? What do you think? Isn't that quiet nice right now?

Clark: “What are you willing to trade?”

 

The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management -- the two federal agencies that control most of Idaho's public lands -- have their hands full balancing the demands of an increasingly polarized nation.

It's only a slight exaggeration to say that whoever controls that thin sliver of dirt and rock threading through Idaho's backcountry contols the access to Idaho's special places. 

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We should have been known what would befall us when we produced our 2007 “Motorized Sports” program. It was a well-crafted and well-intentioned show, and every Idahoan who has experienced a trail bike, snow mobile, jet boat, or sand buggy loved it. The show was pure love of the motorized world.

But the backlash was swift. Outdoor Idaho had crossed a line in the sand with many of the show's core viewers. Some felt we had violated a sacred trust and had joined the enemy.

It didn’t matter that people on gas-powered machines were beginning to outnumber hikers. In fact, that was just the point, the letter writers and phone callers argued.  Why would you want to encourage the gear heads?

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But the story of the White Cloud mountains is a story with twists and turns that rival some of the trails in this   white limestone-capped range. In the late 1960's it seemed inevitable that a roadway would intersect the White Cloud range all the way to its tallest mountain, Castle Peak. The Arizona-based American Smelting and Refining Company -- ASARCO -- was planning to build a road to operate an open pit molybdenum mine at the base of Castle Peak. There was not much the U.S. Forest Service could do to stop them. ASARCO had a legitimate mining claim to the area.

How a political and environmental awakening stopped that road and ultimately led to official Wilderness status for the entire mountain range deserves a chapter of its own. I'm calling it "The Elvis Version: It's Now or Never." 

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Serious mountain bikers -- the pedaling kind -- soon discovered the remarkable primitive trails of the White Cloud Mountains. Bikers from other states traveled to Idaho for the rare opportunity to pedal through a land of superlatives, with crystal-clear mountain lakes nestled among some of the state's highest peaks, and a chance to see mountain goats, wolverines, elk and wolves.

 

I still remember dodging a dozen women mountain bikers in 2014 as they raced past several of us on the trail to Castle Peak. The women were world-class racers, and they were in fabulous shape. It was nothing for them to bike more than 20 miles from one end of the range to the other... and then back again. It was all in a day’s work-out.

Today you won't see any mountain bikers racing through the White Clouds. That's because it's now against the law. In 2015 The White Cloud Mountain Range was afforded the honor of official Wilderness status by the U.S. Congress. The vote was unanimous. That's right, Unanimous.

 

Its passage caught most people off guard, especially those who had been biking the trails of the White Clouds for years. Even the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and the Idaho Conservation League had come to believe that the best protection politically possible for the White Cloud range was National Monument status, something a U.S. President can unilaterally bestow on an area. Of course, a future President can simply undo or change the designation with a signature on a piece of paper. 

 

President Obama was prepared to use his pen to create a new National Monument, but Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson asked for six more months. He wanted one more run at Wilderness designation. It would be his seventh attempt to create a White Cloud Wilderness. He called it his "Elvis Version. It's Now or Never."

The Congressman called on all his connections, his friendship with the Speaker of the House of Representives, and his knowledge of the arcane legislative rules that govern the House. He not only succeeded in securing a Wilderness designation for the White Clouds, but also for the nearby Boulder Mountains and the more pastoral Jerry Peak region. The bill passed with a unanimous vote in the House, with Idaho Senator Jim Risch delivering another unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate. 
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The Wilderness Act of 1964 had established the framework for how Wilderness lands would be managed. The key words are some of the most beautiful words ever written into legislation. “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized 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.”

The 1964 Wilderness Act never once mentioned mountain bikes. The modern mountain bikes did not exist at the time of its passage.  But, as wilderness historian Douglas Scott explained, mountain bikes are “exactly the sort of mechanical transport the law intended to prohibit in Wilderness.” Quiet and primitive recreation had become the historical definition of Wilderness after 1964.

Many mountain bikers see a distinction between their mode of transportation and that of gas-powered machines, and many of them felt betrayed. One avid mountain biker told me he would never trust the Congressman again. “Why would any mountain biker ever want to support Wilderness? The one group that you’d think would support Wilderness now feels their interests are not respected. They would be idiots to ever get behind another Wilderness bill.”

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There is currently a fight at the national level to weaken the Wilderness Act of 1964. It can be done in various ways: couching it as a state's rights issue; allowing Forest Service officials to open up certain trails in their jurisdiction if they deemed it appropriate; selling off public lands to the highest bidder. All of these would affect trails. 

I personally think it would be unfortunate to have mountain bikes in some of our favorite Wilderness areas, like the Sawtooth Wilderness. But should mountain bikes be kept out of all trails in all Wilderness areas? And what about new proposed Wilderness areas? Should exceptions be made? Should decisions about trails be determined by those closest to the action, on a case by case basis?

This is an issue with serious ramifications. If we ban their toys, will a younger generation support Wilderness? Or are National Monuments the future for special places?

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If you have a special place that you cherish, and want to see it protected, it seems you have several options. You can keep it to yourself and make sure others don't hear about it. Or you can build a constituency for your special place, in case it is ever threatened by people richer and more powerful than you.

When Margaret released "Sawtooth and White Cloud Trails" in 1979, it was the first comprehensive guidebook in Idaho. Today you can find dozens of guidebooks to virtually any part of Idaho. But being the first meant your motives were questioned. In the Idaho Statesman newspaper, the letters to the editor were not friendly, accusing her of inviting hordes into secret, fragile places that would never be the same.

Fair enough. Her book certainly lured more people to places like Alice Lake in the Sawtooths and Big Boulder Lakes Basin in the White Clouds.

Margaret’s great value has always been as a confidence builder. Just knowing that Margaret -- with her children in tow -- had thoroughly documented many Wilderness trails in her books gave Mom and Dad the confidence they needed to head out with their own family for a multi-day trip. 

 

To Margaret trails are like blood vessels and in many ways, as important. When the world closes in on you, trails are the escape routes to a different reality. Trails are a tonic for the soul. Without them, the value of much of Idaho would diminish considerably. 

I had not planned to profile Margaret Fuller. But after attending her 90^th birthday party in March of 2025, I realized just how important she has been in shaping our modern concept of trails and public lands. Every one of the sixty people in attendance had a Margaret story.

And when I posted a photo on social media of Margaret and me chatting, I was impressed how many people wrote Thank You notes to her. Here’s a small sample:

“Happy Birthday, Margaret. We have several of your books!”  “What a well-written guidebook. She is one of the best.”  “Amazing woman and Idaho legend.”  “My sister and I love her books and have signed copies that we don’t go hiking without.”  “Much respect for Margaret Fuller. I used her Sawtooth guidebook for my first backpacking trip and still use it today.” “A special soul. I miss her bonnet.”

 

The grand lady of the mountains is a determined woman, perhaps the most determined woman I know. She’s written 10? books, with three more in the works, she told me at her 90th birthday party.

Her biggest fan is her husband. With a sense of pride, he marked off all her surgeries -- on knees and back, even on her right wrist from a fall -- and he was quick to point out, “it hasn’t slowed her down!” He knew she could leave him in the dust on any of the 6,000 miles she’s clocked, including Goat Lake, which she wrote was “the most dangerous hike” in the Sawtooths.

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One can argue that Margaret’s obsession with trails has been a double-edged sword. The day that several of us had taken a hard-to-find trail straight up a mountain top for our show, “You Can’t Get There From Here,” we were the only ones at the beautiful, good-sized lake just off a key trail in the Sawtooths.

A Forest Service official noted that on that same weekend, 50 people had been to Goat Lake and dozens more to Sawtooth Lake.

That’s one edge of the two-edged sword.

But I can’t help thinking of Castle Peak. It was only saved because people came to know about it and began to care. 

So that’s the other side of the proverbial sword. Sometimes, building a constituency can actually save a place, even if it means more people on the trails. You might never visit the Sawtooths or the White Clouds, but it's good to know that it's there if you ever wanted to. 

Margaret may be selling a few guide books, but she’s also building a fan base for Idaho’s special places.

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We had heard that America's newest Wilderness had few trails. We were intrigued, so in 2016 I gathered a group of experienced hikers to walk the length of the Hemingway-Boulder Wilderness Area, starting near the West Pass Creek trailhead toward the North Fork of the Big Wood River, and hiking out the other end of the Wilderness just outside Ketchum and Sun Valley, a distance of more than ten miles.

 

It was hard to find anyone who had recently traveled through the Boulders, and we soon realized why. As Rick Gerrard, an experienced hiker commented, "this is the most vertical environment I've spent time in. We haven't done one hike that hasn't been challenging."

 

We hadn't gone far before the stream washed out part of the trail. A small pile of rocks, a cairn, marked the junction where we left the old mining road and started up the West Pass Creek trail to our base camp. At one point the trail turned into a sea of rocks. 

Upon hearing that we would be hiking in the Boulders, Margaret Fuller told one of our group, "I think you're nuts."

 

"There was a trail coming up initially, but then it turns into a goat trail," explained Dan King, whom we affectionately nicknamed "the Goat" because of where he's willing to hike. "When you hear 'goat trail,' there actually are goat trails here. So you follow those because the goats know where they're going. They kind of give you advice, but not necessarily the best advice."

 

 We set up base camp at 8,800 feet, in what passes for a flat area, more than four miles from the parking area. This would be our home for four days. The most pristine water on the planet was less than 100 yards from our tents, as were breathtaking meadows of wildflowers, small waterfalls, and a red ridge line of mountains that came almost up to our camp. 

I had agreed to prepare the meals.

One of the reasons I never got rich working on Outdoor Idaho was that I always tried to impress fellow travelers with my home-cooked meals. The things I used to eat as a teenager -- like dehydrated pork -- still make me blanche to think about it.

For our Boulders trip, I started out simple, with buffalo burgers. But eventually I built up to my go-to dish. Chicken piccata is always a hit, especially the way I prepare it. The trick is to wait til the third or fourth day. By then, the lemons are ripe and juicy, the butter is sufficiently melted, the hand-picked morels have been washed, and people are starving for something hearty.  Sometimes there's wine to go with the meals. Sometimes, it's quality beer. That depends entirely on what the group purchases. I leave that to them.

 

"Bruce knows a lot of recipes," said Rick Gerrard, "but they all taste like chicken piccata. Not that I'm complaining, however." I've also experimented with dutch oven pork spareribs with sauer kraut and brown sugar, and I'm expanding my dessert choices. My current favorite is pineapple upside-down cake. After an unfortunate mishap, I've discovered that there's no real need to flip it upside down. It still tastes fine.

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The one thing about spending four days in the Hemingway-Boulder wilderness: it will make a mountain climber out of you. The highest point on the main trail is West Pass, at 10,060 feet. Nearby Ryan Peak is 11,714 feet. Why not climb to the top of Ryan Peak, the tallest mountain in the Boulders. It's only another 1700 feet. What could possibly go wrong?

                                      

Joining us up the mountain would be Chadd Cripe, the outdoor writer for the state's largest newspaper, the Idaho Statesman. Chadd was a self-professed car camper. He had never been in Wilderness before, "so I'm different than most of you guys in that respect," he commented to me. "I'm a Trail guy. I like to know where I am and where I'm going." I can only imagine his concern when, on the third day, our entire group was at West Pass, operating GPS units and trying to figure out which peak was Ryan.

 

"I was using a new app," said Rick Gerrard. "I was absolutely willing to bet a dollar that I was looking at Ryan Peak when really I was looking at nearby Kent Peak. Fortunately, somebody convinced me and we went the right way."

If Chadd was concerned, he hid it well. He was excited and convinced it would be memorable. And with Chadd along, the rest of us knew it would be memorable.

 

"And then there was a mountain goat," explained Chadd, as he relived his Ryan Peak experience. "By the time I took a picture of the goat, a string of peope were going up the hill. And so I followed and ended up going a littled bit harder route, up the face of Ryan Peak.

"The first third of it was just fine. And then it got really loose rock and really kind of spooky.  At one point I lost my sweatshirt. I had it strapped to something on my backpack that broke. It was 10 feet below me. And it was so spooky looking down, I didn't want to go back for it. I left it. I wasn't going down the hill at that point."

I asked him if it was still there. "It's still there, a donation to the wilderness. We joked whether the goat was going to wear it or the sheep, but yeah, it's still there."

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Enter the lupine, a stunning blue-violet perennial, sometimes used for medicinal purposes, with a taproot that manages to prosper among rocks and very little soil.

"At one point somebody yelled down to me, 'Just follow the lupine!' That's the advice I got, follow the lupine," said Chadd. "I had never given much thought to lupine before. But I found I could grab onto the lupine. You can't grab onto the rock because the rock just comes right out from under you. The lupine didn't budge. They were my new best friends because they got me up the hill."

 

Eventually, Chadd ran out of lupine and had to scramble up the mountain without their help. He still had a 600 foot elevation gain along a ridge that dropped off severely on both sides. He was now forced to confront his inner demons.

The Boulders are volcanic and sedimentary rock, with some granite. It's what climbing books refer to as "rotten." Even what appears to be solid rock can crumble in your hands. 

 

"That was probably the scariest part. You start kicking rocks down the hill, and you start thinking Rock Slide! Am I going to be a rock slide going down the hill? And there was nothing to stop you.

"For a long time I was afraid of heights. You get that vertigo feeling. It's a big huge 3,000-foot drop over here and over there. Every once in a while I'd see somebody peeking over the hill at me, so I knew there were people up there that had survived it. Fortunately some of the guys kind of talked me through it. 'Go this way. Go that way.' The presence of a sometimes-clear, sometimes-faint trail eased the tension."

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At the summit there were High Fives all around. We sat on the top of the narrow strip of peak for more than an hour, trying not to get blown off the mountain, and trying to memorize what seemed like all of central Idaho beneath us. We knew we'd never come this way again.

 

Dan King had climbed most of the large peaks below us, and could identify what the rest of us were seeing. "You can see the Pioneers. You can see the Lost River Range. You can see the Sawtooths. Ryan Peak is right in the middle of all this. You can kind of put it all together. When you've done all the other areas, it all ties together."

Dan made us feel good when he commented that he had lost twenty pounds in preparation for this trip. "So I think I'm in better shape than I was ten years ago. I could actually feel the difference."

 

Also getting to the top was my colleague John Crancer. He fought through the pain of his feet and his bout with cancer and lyme disease. "The view was worth it," he said. "You’re in the heart of everything.”

 

Linda Olson, who had two knees replaced the year before, also summitted. She was more concerned about how to get back down with two rebuilt knees. "Two years ago, before I had the knees, I couldn’t even hike anymore. That just tells you how good the doctors are, that you could do something like this."

 

Tim Tower arrived at the top and almost immediately began taking photos. Both Tim and Rick Gerrard have volunteered for many of our Outdoor Idaho excursions and are the primary reason some segments of the series are well-documented. I used to think it was the chicken piccata, but they both said what brings them back is the comraderie, the difficulty of the journeys, the humor, and the campfire discussions.

 

Jay Krajic has climbed all nine of Idaho's peaks that tower above 12,000 feet in elevation-- mountains like Borah and Hyndman and Church -- for a program we called "Idaho's 12ers."  Ryan Peak missed being in that august group by 286 feet. Jay knew what he was getting into, "but that was brutal," he said. "I like a challenge, but I was cursing the whole way up Ryan."

Jay and I had taken what we thought might be the trail, tackling Ryan from the side. The others chose the more direct way, up the face of the mountain. Jay was carrying the camera and the tripod. Occasionally, I would offer to lessen his load, hoping he wouldn't accept my offer. It's possible he didn't hear me.

 

 For much of the ascent, we were struggling through rock that had mostly devolved into sand. "Two steps up, one step back," he said. I'm sure everyone tackling Ryan that day was second-guessing their choice of route.  But there was simply no good way up that peak.

 

Luckily, the view was worth the effort. “The view is amazing,” Jay said, over the howling wind. “I did Borah last August. I think this is a better view. It's prettier here. Everything seems so much closer."

Coming down the mountain wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be. With all that rotten rock and sand, it was a lot like skiing. We each spread out, to avoid the large rocks that beat us to the bottom. The only casualty was a pair of khaki shorts.

 

When we got back to camp, there was much to talk about around the campfire. 

"The trail isn't always the best route," admonished Dan King. "We went up a route that looked like the least challenging. When we came down the mountain and hiked down the actual trail, that was far worse. Following the trail is not always the best option."

"I appreciate trails as much as anyone," said Rick Gerrard. "In fact, I thought coming down from the summit of Ryan that I was on a trail, and suddenly there was no trail. The next thing I know, I hear this waterfall. I would never have come across it if I hadn't wandered off the main trail, if you can call it a main trail. Around here there's no such thing."

 

Peter Morrill was into word play when I asked him his reaction to the Boulder Wilderness Area, "There is a spookiness about this place. I think you have to be a little bolder to come into this area," he said.  "It's very high elevation.  It's very, very rugged.  And I think the ruggedness is a good explanation as to why this area really only has one major trail.  And that major trail is a very modest trail to nonexistent trail for large segments of it.  And I think that's part of the mystery, and I think part of the challenge of a place like this."

 

I had never been interviewed at 11,714 feet, but Chadd wanted something at the summit for the newspaper story he was writing. The wind was blowing so hard that we could barely hear each other speak. The one thing I do remember saying was completely wiped out by a blast of wind, so when we watched the interview later, I had to listen carefully to make out what I had said. I still believe it. 

This is, indeed, the Wild Child of the Trinity of new Wilderness areas.

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