The Elvis Version: It's Now or Never
Draft 3.5 June 23, 2025
Binary stars gravitationally bound to each other. That's one way to view the special relationship of the Sawtooth and White Cloud mountains. At a crucial moment in time, each helped "save" the other, and together they defined Idaho's environmental growth spurts of the last five decades.
One thing I'll always be proud of is how the Outdoor Idaho team told the story of the interrelationship of the White Clouds and the Sawtooths, in hour-long Specials like "The Public's Land," "A Sawtooth Silver Anniversary," "50 Years of Wilderness," "A Sawtooth Celebration," "The People's Land," "White Clouds in Waiting," and "Beyond the White Clouds."
What emerges is a story of hard work, persistence, leadership, and collaboration that transformed an open pit mine into coveted Wilderness, unanimously agreed upon by both chambers of Congress.
Throw into the mix the making of the nation's first environmental governor and later a congressman whose final attempt at a Wilderness bill he referred to as his Elvis version.
If a novelist were to include all the twists and turns involved in this environmental story, she might be accused of writing fantasy or science fiction.
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The fishing was better in the White Clouds. Something about sedimentary rock being more nutritious than granite. That was the first time I paid attention to the mountain range named after the white chalk-like peaks that blended with the billowy clouds above.
I was intrigued, naturally, but not enough to take a hike. To this 12-year-old, the Sawtooth Mountains were all I needed. They were right there, more accessible, more friendly, less scary even, with plenty of catchable fish.
It wasn’t until my early twenties that I began seeking out the White Cloud range, first with my dog, later with friends, and then a handful of times for various Outdoor Idaho programs.
If you take the trail off the East Fork Road, it's a 13-mile round trip hike, offering a photographer the best views of Castle Peak. And when you finally stand in the presence of the nearly 12,000 ft giant -- as we did in 2014 -- you know in your bones why the early conservationists fought so hard to save this magnificent peak. It’s not hyperbole to call it the most important mountain in the state of Idaho.
That hike was a memorable one for our Outdoor Idaho team. For one thing, we had invited several of our photographer friends to join us. The only stipulation was that they bring back images we could use for our hour-long special, "50 Years of Wilderness," as well as for any other programs we might produce, in perpetuity. And in return, I would cook up my patented Chicken Picatta for one of the meals.
One always prepares for a thunderstorm in the mountains, especially in July. We got a deluge, with hail. We also got one of the most enticing photos of Castle Peak I've ever seen. Aaron Kunz was a newbie to backpacking in the White Clouds, but he knew his way around professional camera gear. While the rest of us were still in our tents, Aaron decided he needed to escape.
"I had purchased a little pup tent for this trip, an A-frame which I set up in the field, in a little dip," he told me. "I ended up in a puddle of water, trying to keep my electronics out of the puddle the whole night. Before daylight, I decided to take my Canon 7D on a short hike to warm up and to dry out. I walked a ways, turned around and saw the most beautiful sight. The sun had peaked over the mountains and was hitting the top of Castle peak. The sun was a warm color, and it made the whole day for me."
By the time the rest of us had climbed out of our wet tents, that ephemeral light on the mountain top had vanished. After a quick bowl of oatmeal and granola, we all scattered with our various cameras to bring back that perfect shot. But we were pretty sure Aaron had already won the contest.
There were other memories of that trip. The 12 mountain bikers that flew past several of us as we were hiking along the trail. I remember thinking, what if we had been on horseback?
The Big Boulder Lakes of Cirque, Sapphire, and Cove, where I learned to always carry my fishing license with me, even if the lake doesn’t have a trail. You never know when an Idaho Fish & Game officer may wander by.
That second evening around the campfire, when we realized John Crancer was not with us. We had almost begun a search party in the dark, when we heard John's footsteps.
"I didn’t like the approach Jay Krajic took to reach Castle Lake,” he said. “He had taken a narrow trail with a super steep drop off if you slipped. So I took an alternate route up a steep boulder-filled canyon. I finally made it around dusk, took some quick video of the lake with a go-pro camera and had to double-time it back to camp. After al that, the footage was never used. It’s probably still at the station somewhere, probably on some backup drive."
There were many memorable moments on that trip, but this is the chapter about why the White Clouds are still worth visiting. Few may know the story, but it was not inevitable, and there are many people to thank for that.
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Interested in a version of Idaho’s David and Goliath story, told entirely from Outdoor Idaho interviews conducted over the span of several decades, with key players in the nearly 50-year drama?
I had forgotten how much great material never made it into our Outdoor Idaho programs. Blame it on our tendency to over-shoot interviews. Couple that with the tyranny of TV time-constraints, and a lot of history wound up on the proverbial cutting room floor. Much of it has never seen the light of day. It's time some of it got used, if only to shed more light on one of Idaho's most inspiring and intriguing chapters.
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The story begins in the mid 1960’s, when one of the world's largest mining companies at the time, ASARCO, began making plans to forever change the face of the White Cloud Mountains.
How could The American Smelting and Refining Company do that, you ask? The geologists of ASARCO believed that, under the largest mountain peak in the majestic White Cloud mountains, lay deposits of the element molybdenum, used to strengthen steel.
The easiest way to secure the moly was to create an open pit mine at the base of the White Cloud’s dominant mountain, Castle Peak. When a concerned citizen wondered what would happen to that mountain, one of their geologists reportedly commented, "When we get done, there won’t even be a Castle Peak."
The U.S. Forest Service wasn’t going to stop them. Their hands were tied. The Mining Act of 1872 heavily favored miners and mining, and ASARCO had filed legitimate mining claims for several hundred acres in the White Clouds. Forest Service officials were in no hurry to acknowledge their inability to influence the outcome. That allowed the mining company to begin work near Castle Peak before the public even knew what was happening.
ASARCO’s plan was to dig upwards of 20,000 tons of rock daily out of the mountain, to be deposited in a tailings pond in a nearby mountain meadow. A road through the heart of the mountain range was a necessity for the heavy equipment that would be needed for the mine. ASARCO’s specialty was open pit mines, and this would be one of the world's largest. That road was key to their operation.
How do you convince people to care about a mountain they can't see from the highway? And who but a handful of backpackers had ever visited Castle Peak?
And how do you counter a Governor who argued that Idaho got its start because of mining and that 350 good-paying jobs for Challis residents hung in the balance? Besides, opined Governor Don Samuelson, no one ever visited the White Clouds.
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I’m reminded of the quote attributed to the anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
When backpacker Jan Boles returned from the White Clouds in 1969 with photographs of ASARCO's initial work on the open pit mine, he was heartbroken.
"The first thing we encountered was the ASARCO camp at Baker Lake which was set in deep woods. You couldn’t see much. But then we worked on out toward their claim, and all of a sudden, here was a big clearing for the helicopters. A lot of timber had been cut down. Then just beyond that was the drill rig at Little Boulder Chain, Lake One, which showed the effluent being dumped right in the water. It wasn't clear anymore. It was that milky turquoise color in the water.
"The Boulder Chain Lakes are a tributary of the East Fork of the Salmon River, and the Salmon was regarded as a pristine river system. A lot of people in there, a lot of machinery, a lot of noise, a lot of dynamite. When we were still miles from the location, these rumbles of enormous dynamite explosions. They were really kind of spooky."
Being the literary person he was, Jan compared that hike to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. "We felt more like two hobbits approaching the dark citadel of Mordor than walking into a high alpine lake."
I interviewed the retired College of Idaho archivist 30 years after his sobering backpack adventure. You could tell that experience still affected him.
"There was no doubt in my mind that the trail would be replaced by a road. Other than the dynamite, it was quiet wilderness. All that would be replaced by heavy industry. It would just take an entire drainage and wreck it as far as hunting, fishing, recreation, backpacking. It would be the difference between the Middle Fork of the Salmon... and the Silver Valley and what happened to the Coeur d’Alene River.
"What we reported was the first evidence from on the ground that there was a lot of displacement already back in there. I did a lot of headshaking."
Boyd Norton and 23 of his friends had already decided to fight. They just didn't realize how far ASARCO had progressed deep in the White Clouds. Most of Boyd's friends worked for the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory outside of Idaho Falls. Many were fresh off a victory in Hells Canyon, fighting against the proposed High Mountain Sheep Dam. That dam would have wiped out the last free-flowing stretch of the Snake River in Hells Canyon.
Boyd Norton was used to lousy odds. He would not be deterred.
For the Castle Peak battle, their umbrella was the Greater Sawtooth Preservation Council. In an interview conducted in 2012(?) Boyd Norton reminisced about how his group approached the Castle Peak battle. Certainly, Jan Boles' photos would be part of the campaign.
"You've got to remember this was long before the internet," explained Boyd, "so there was a lot of networking that went on, but we didn't use the term networking. It was communication with people, either done by mail or phone calls. We published a newsletter. It went out to garden clubs, bird watching groups, anyone who had an interest in the out-of-doors. And, of course, we appealed to some of the hunting and fishing groups as well.
"What got us fired up was the prospect of the complete and utter destruction of this beautiful area. An open pit mine is the ultimate desecration of a place.”
In that interview, Boyd listed folks who helped them out. They were the backbone of Idaho's conservation movement of the 1960's and '70's. Ted Trueblood, the editor of Field and Stream magazine; Bruce Bowler, a lawyer who did pro bono work and who acted as a legal resource; Paul Fritz, supervisor of several national parks and also the group's "deep throat" in the Department of the Interior; Jack Hemingway, the son of Ernest Hemingway; Mort Brigham, a founding member of the Hells Canyon Preservation Society.
And then there was Ernie Day. "If you go back and look at the history of the conservation movement here in Idaho," said Boyd, "he was probably the pioneer. Maybe he and Ted Trueblood and Bruce Bowler, all at the same time."
Aside from all the conservation leaders in the state, the Greater Sawtooth Preservation Council had another thing on their side, said Boyd. “Some of the ASARCO people were really kind of stupid. They made such outrageous statements that we could point out to people how absurd these things were that they were pushing.”
Boyd recalled the time the mining officials boasted that they were going to create a beautiful lake from the big hole they would create, and that it would become a recreation area for people to visit. So, Boyd traveled to Leadville, Colorado, and took photos of the Henderson mine and the tailings pond they had there.
“It was a pile of sludge and muck and all kinds of carcinogens. That was certainly no recreation lake. We were able to run photographs of that sludge pond and say, 'Do you want this in the White Clouds?'
“There are a lot of people who live in Idaho who may not be hard core conservationists,” Boyd told us. "But they really appreciate what they have here. And when you have something that is so threatening and damaging as an open pit mine, I think that makes people sit up and take notice. Sure, it will be jobs, sure it will bring money into the state, but is it worth it? What about the quality of life that we have here? That’s the kind of thing that was a driving force for a lot of us.”
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A photograph is worth a thousand words. Sometimes, if it's good enough, it can even save a mountain. Boise native Ernie Day was an excellent photographer. One of his aerial photographs of Castle Peak was so exceptional that Boyd and his group used it in their posters and at gatherings and hearings. The photograph was part of a full page spot in the Idaho Statesman.
Finally, there was a face to the mountain. There was now an image that allowed people to care about something they hadn't been able to see before.
I have a 16x20 inch copy of that photograph, framed and above my desk. I had gone to visit Ernie to say howdy. As I was leaving, he reached down and pulled out a rolled-up parchment and handed it to me. I didn't know what it was until I got home. It was a copy of his famous photo.
I remember staring at it for a long time. Part of its effect was that it's not color -- it's black and white -- and photographed from the air in such a way that the 11,815-foot Peak towers over the other nearby mountains, including the Sawtooth range, in the background. You see enough of the surrounding landscape that you can imagine how you would hike to it.
Ernie’s photograph was featured in several national newspapers, like the Wall Street Journal.
“We got a lot of power out of that photo,” said Ernie. “A Life Magazine man picked it up, and I hiked him all over the White Clouds, and oh boy, he went back, and he really gave us a great boost nationally.”
Castle Peak was now in the national consciousness. What was once a skirmish in an unseen mountain range had suddenly become a nationwide battle for the soul of America.
For my money, Ernie's photo is the most important photograph in Idaho's pantheon of spectacular images.
Outdoor Idaho may have been the last to conduct a lengthy interview with the gruff man, and he was in a reflective mood when colleague Greg Hahn interviewed him in ____. “The 1872 Mining law said that miners were King," said Ernie. "There was nothing we could do. We just had to get the white heat of publicity so that enough people would rebel. We had a bunch of really red-hot kids environmentally in the Idaho Conservation League. They gave us a lot of help, and we got the Sierra Club in it, too. We had a lot of allies, thank God.
"The thing that stopped ASARCO was the nationwide publicity and the fact that they just couldn’t stand up to that."
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Ernie Day was close friends with Idaho's U.S. Senator Frank Church, and he made all his photos available to the Senator. "I always had a high regard for Frank. I was in his home when he died, and I never saw anybody as peaceful and at peace with the world as he was when he passed away. He was a young man when he died. It makes you wonder what he could have accomplished."
Senator Church had spent years pushing for protection for the Sawtooth area. As early as 1960, he had addressed Idahoans on television, saying “I think there is no scenic grandeur anywhere in the United States to compare with the jagged summits of the Sawtooths.”
He favored a national park, but he was a practical politician and realized that something called a national recreation area was more in line with Idahoans’ thinking. He introduced a bill in Congress for each. The question then became not “whether” to protect the Sawtooths but “how” to protect the Sawtooths.
Part of the reason the national park approach was going nowhere was because the Forest Service was waging a quiet battle against his efforts. The federal agency did not want to lose the Sawtooth Mountains to the National Park Service.
In a 2011 interview, Tom Kovalicky explained to me what his forest supervisor told him when Tom became district ranger for the Stanley Ranger District. "My job was to go to Stanley and make sure that the National Park Service doesn't get the hearts and minds of the local people and turn this into a National Park. That was the Forest Service's big fear."
It didn’t take Tom long to figure out what he had to do. "If the Park Service takes over, there will be no more hunting. And that is the thing that made people say, we want to talk more about this."
It was always fun to interview Tom, and I interviewed him on several occasions over three decades. For some reason -- and maybe it was just the way he is -- he was never afraid to tear into the Forest Service during our interviews. It was usually after he had answered all my questions. Since he had spent 30 years working for the federal agency, including as Supervisor of the Nez Perce National Forest during the 1980's, I figured his opinions had validity.
We had developed a friendship over the years, which maybe caused him to say things about the federal agency that he regretted the next day. He had a funny way of informing me. "The sun got in my eyes" was one line he used. I could usually tell him I got what I needed for our story and the rest would be background for the next one.
His major complaint was that the Forest Service wasn't taking to heart the mission statement written into the legislation itself. Congress had instructed the Forest Service to treat the Sawtooth National Recreation Area differently from the other property it managed, and Tom felt the agency was failing to do that.
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Ironically, both Boyd Norton and Ernie Day, along with Senator Frank Church, had at one time favored a National Park in and around the Sawtooth Mountains.
“Whenever you threaten a national park, I mean it’s like God, mother and country,” said Boyd. “A national park is something kind of sacred in the minds of many people. So it really was important, we felt, to push for a national park. Of course, later we got talked out of it.”
It was Frank Church who talked them out of it. He had somewhat reluctantly decided that Idahoans did not want a national park in the Sawtooths, so it was not going to happen.
“To think that I was pushing a national park, it just makes me shudder," said Ernie. "That’s where I made my mistake. We would have had hot dog stands and a gazillion roads up in there, and it would have been just so commercialized. What would have followed would have just been chaos. Thank God we’re sometimes saved from ourselves!”
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Without a national park, what would it take to confront the very real threat of an open pit mine in one mountain range and to head off a ramshackle mess of buildings at the base of the Sawtooth mountain range?
Turns out, it required the alliance of all four members of Idaho's Congressional delegation: Frank Church, a Democrat, and Republican Len Jordan in the Senate, as well as James McClure and Orval Hansen in the House of Representatives. Luckily, all four were eventually in agreement.
"The four of us finally got together," said Congressman Orval Hansen, when I interviewed him at his residence in Stanley, along the banks of the Salmon River. "Len was never a fan of a national park, but he would support another concept which was fairly new in government that they called a 'Recreation Area.'
"If grazing and other uses were compatible with recreation, then the land could be owned by the individual landowner. So Len went on the bill with Frank Church to create a national recreation area."
When ASARCO began tearing up the forest at the base of Castle Peak, the two men quickly expanded their national recreation proposal to include Castle Peak and the White Cloud Mountains.
The prestige of Senators Church and Jordan working together virtually guaranteed passage in the Senate. But in the House of Representatives, it was a different matter. There the burden fell to Idaho Republicans Orval Hansen and James McClure to convince their colleagues to support something most knew little about.
The real problem was on the House side, former congressman Orval Hansen explained. The powerful Chairman of the House Interior Committee, Wayne Aspinall from Colorado, was the gatekeeper for those kinds of bills. Luckily for Idaho, said Orval, James McClure was good friends with Aspinall.
"I introduced a bill which turns out to be the bill that the President finally signed," said Orval, "but nothing was happening. I'm one to believe, and I've said that Jim McClure was the key to this. Now Frank had done the initial work to look at the options and to build public support, but in the critical moment when we had to enlist the chairman to get behind it and to schedule hearings, it was Jim McClure.
"He was as gifted a legislator as I have ever seen. When he finally joined my bill as a co-sponsor and told the chairman we'd like to have hearings and move forward, that was what did it."
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The 1970 election for Governor pitted Governor Don Samuelson against Democrat Cecil Andrus. Looking back, the timing was perfect. The celebration of Earth Day had just begun, and Bob Dylan was singing, "The times, they are a 'changin'." Candidate Cecil Andrus caught the emerging conservation wave sweeping Idaho and the nation. Governor Don Samuelson did not. Andrus came out four-square against the open pit mine. Samuelson endorsed it.
I interviewed Cecil several times about that election. In 2011 he told us, "What they wanted to do was a crime, and I said No, we're not going to let that happen, and we didn't. That issue alone probably accounted for the margin of victory that I had in 1970, which was about 10 or 11,000 votes."
In another interview, in 2016, he again reminisced. "So that election took place. A funny thing happened. A Democratic lumberjack from north Idaho stumbled into the governor's office.
"I met with Frank Church quite a few times, and we decided if you make this beautiful valley a national park, it will attract so many people that they'll tromp over one another. It can't stand that much pressure. Also, you couldn't allow hunting and fishing, which, was a big thing here.
"One of the few times we differed with some of our other conservation friends. We said a national recreation area is the way to go. Was that right? Was that wrong? I don't know, but that's the way it went.
"I have a beautiful photo of Castle Peak, framed, in my home, and the caption that I have for it when people point to it and ask, I say, 'Yes, that's the mountain that created a Governor. It is, you know. It gave me that edge in 1970."
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One of the key players in this saga seldom gets the attention he deserves: the three- term Congressman from Idaho's 2nd Congressional district. "The point that most people don't know," said Orval Hansen, "is, had we not passed that bill at that time, you would be looking at wall to wall development in this valley."
Orval was convinced that the environmental community -- if it had been better organized -- could have defeated the SNRA legislation, preferring a national park instead. If that had happened, said Orval, it would have been years before anything substantial could be worked out.
"So I think maybe one can say, the Good Lord was with us on this one. We can be so grateful that, as a result of that good luck and some real statesmanship by a lot of people, we have preserved and will for all time one of the greatest scenic treasures on the earth."
Most Idahoans were not familiar with the concept of a national recreation area. They just knew that dealing with the U.S. Forest Service was preferable to the National Park Service, and that they could still hunt and trap and fish and gather firewood. NRAs were more flexible and could also be managed for more than just the goal of preservation. There was no blueprint for an NRA, and that was part of its appeal.
For example, the Sawtooth NRA was written to "preserve the natural, scenic, historic, pastoral, and fish and wildlife values while also providing a recreational playground for Idahoans and the nation."
Importantly, said Orval, "the legislation also authorized tens of millions of dollars to begin acquiring scenic easements, which as you know means that you sell your right to build beyond a certain level, so that you can preserve in natural form all the great places of scenic beauty and the recreation opportunities we have here."
The best explanation I've heard of the difference between a national park and a national recreation area came from Ed Cannady, retired backcountry manager of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.
"People get to be part of the ecosystem. You can cut firewood, you can graze cows, you can do things you can't do in a national park. You can hunt elk and deer, and you can fish. I feel really connected to Yellowtone and Grand Teton, because I like those places a lot, but not like I do here. I am part of this place. I think you lose that in a lot of national parks. You go there to look. You come here to really truly experience."
I do believe it was the Delegation's finest hour. They could rightfully point to two problems solved. They created a way to rein in the development of second-rate subdivisions within the Sawtooth Valley, by buying out private properties at fair market value.
They also made sure the SNRA included the White Cloud Mountains. So even though ASARCO still had a legitimate mining claim near Castle Peak, it had just become considerably more difficult for them to build the road they needed through the White Cloud Mountains.
ASARCO could read the tea leaves, especially after the public hearing in Sun Valley, where virtually everyone who spoke blasted the mining company. It must have surprised them. Soon after, they folded.
The Sawtooth National Recreation Area passed the House and the Senate and was signed by President Richard Nixon in 1972.
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To Boyd Norton, this was a case of each mountain range benefiting the other. "When we formed this organization called the Greater Sawtooth Preservation Council, it meant just that. It included the White Cloud and the Boulder mountains. It was something that I think sparked that movement to get the whole region preserved and put into some kind of a classification."
“I think the controversy over the White Clouds was a real catalyst for preserving the whole area," said Boyd. "I think it made people sit up and realize that we’ve got a real important wilderness resource here."
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Fast forward to the 21st century.
“The stars were so bright you didn’t need a flashlight. I was just sitting there trying to wrap my mind around infinity. I kept thinking that one day, 100 years from now, some kid will lay there and look at those stars.”
Say what you will about the Congressman from one of America’s most conservative districts, there aren’t too many politicians who would hike into a wilderness area, stare at the stars, contemplate infinity... and then be willing to talk about it.
But the evolution of Mike Simpson didn’t happen overnight. As he told us in a 2015 interview, “Before this, the closest I came to wilderness was when my golf ball got caught in the rough.”
It could be the start of a joke. A politician from the reddest part of America and the head of the most successful environmental organization in Idaho walk into a bar...
Luckily for those pushing for Wilderness protection for the White Cloud Mountains, Congressman Mike Simpson and Idaho Conservation League director Rick Johnson hit it off.
Somehow, they managed to transcend the way politics is practiced in Washington, D.C. They talked together. They hiked together. They strategized together. They had each other’s back. And the more Rick Johnson studied the history of Castle Peak, the more he came to see that "the White Cloud story goes back to Cecil Andrus and the mine. But the modern chapter is really about Mike Simpson and moving the bill forward."
One can understand why environmentally inclined people wanted to add another layer of protection to the largest unprotected roadless area in the lower 48. There was still the theoretical threat of a large-scale mining operation. There was also the continuing threat of escalating motorized recreation, with bigger and faster and more powerful machines being built every year, and going further and further into the backcountry.
But it was more than that. "Castle Peak really became emblematic of the whole modern conservation movement," said Rick Johnson. "The White Clouds became this larger-than-life story. Everyone has some special part of Idaho, and Castle Peak is really emblematic of all those places."
But it’s harder to understand the motivation of an eight term congressman from eastern Idaho's spud country, where his strongest supporters were potato farmers.
"It didn't come naturally," said Rick, "but politics came naturally. Mike Simpson is a doer. He saw something that other people hadn't been able to do. And he says, 'well, by golly, I can do that.' And he started going out there. And he went out almost every year for a while, brought his staff frequently. He never brought reporters. He wasn't doing it for show. He was going out there with his watercolors. He was going out there just to spend some time. And it changed him. He fell in love with the place."
Mike Simpson had a favorite statement: “I believe that when God goes on vacation, he goes to the Boulder-White Clouds.” Trouble is, so do many people, and to them, vacation conjures up a bicycle ride or an ATV or a snowmobile trip through the exceptional valleys and mountains of the White Clouds.
When we interviewed Mike Simpson in 2016, he talked about the difficulties of such collaborative efforts as his. "If anybody would have told me when we started that it was going to take 15 years, I would have thought, Nah, you're crazy. To me, when I started, it was a challenge, and then it became a passion. It seemed so obvious that something needed to get done."
Not everyone saw a threat hanging over the White Cloud Mountains, and most of them were on bicycles and all-terrain vehicles. It had been 30 years since the days of Senator Frank Church, and this new generation knew little about ASARCO or an open pit mine. The creation of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area was ancient news to them.
Besides, they loved their toys. Why would you block people out of an area that they had been recreating in for dozens of years? Why add another layer of bureaucracy to something that wasn't broken?
And yet, to stalwart conservationists in Idaho and across the nation, the largest unprotected roadless area in the lower 48 was still "unprotected." This issue was not going away.
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Today we know what ultimately happened. On August 7, 2015, President Obama signed the “Sawtooth National Recreation Area and Jerry Peak Wilderness Additions Act.” America suddenly had three new Wilderness areas: the White Clouds Wilderness, the Hemingway-Boulders Wilderness, and the Jim McClure-Jerry Peak Wilderness. Taken together, it's an extraordinary diversity of mountains, rivers, and sagebrush habitats.
The legislation kept dirt bike access to trails that had previously been open to two-wheeled vehicles. Roads remained open to trucks and ATVs. There were trails left open for mountain bikes, except two of the most popular trails: Castle Divide and Ants Basin. It set aside $5 million for a community center, health clinic, emergency services and highway improvements for Custer County. And ranchers with grazing rights could allow environmental groups to buy out their allotments.
The White Cloud wilderness made perfect sense. Since the 1970's, with the threat of an open-pit mine at the base of Castle Peak, a White Cloud wilderness had always been the prize. Its stunning mountains and crystalline lakes ensure that it will be the favorite of the three.
To me, the Boulder Mountain wilderness is the "wild child" of the three. It is rugged, steep, and with few trails. The Outdoor Idaho crew climbed the tallest mountain in the Boulders and can attest to its ruggedness.
To hear Rick Johnson tell it, there had always been a "marketing" strategy to its connection with the White Clouds. "In the earlier history, it was always 'the White Clouds.' We attached 'Boulder' because more people knew where the Boulder Mountains were. Frankly, it was a marketing thing. The Boulder-White Clouds. We wanted the identity to be for those two mountain ranges and for people to understand the interconnectedness of that ecosystem."
But the real gem, said Rick, is the Jerry Peak Wilderness, "It's on the other side of the East Fork of the Salmon River. That's the watershed of Herd Creek. It's the biggest piece, with some of the best wildlife habitat, and the best solitude you're going to find. The real gem is there."
If you were as surprised as I was when three wilderness areas were announced, don't feel bad. Every environmental group in the nation was caught off guard. The Idaho Conservation League, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society -- they had given up on the dream of Wilderness.
"When you fight a campaign for 15 years, and you're failing to get there, and all you can see is more polarization, more division, the chances of really getting it done were getting more bleak," explained Rick Johnson. "President Obama had designated 22 national monuments. That was a viable strategy.
"It came to us through Cecil Andrus. He challenged us to put Congress aside and start focusing on a national monument. We embraced that challenge, hard as it was."
"Patience wears thin," Congressman Simpson told us. “I think they thought, maybe the way to do this is a monument. We won't get a Wilderness area, which is the highest protection that we could designate the land."
National monuments are lands and waters designated for permanent protection by the federal government. A president can create a national monument with the stroke of a pen... and it can be any size the President deems it to be.
Often, when politicians and interest groups are forced to choose between one of two choices, they'll hold their collective noses and choose what they think is the lesser of two evils.
"And I think the threat of that pushed some people into saying, we need to sit down and see if we can come to a resolution on this wilderness bill," said Mike. "With a national monument you don't know what the management plan is going to be, what the boundaries are going to be. That's all written in Washington, D.C. With a national monument, everything is up in the air, and it can be overturned with the stroke of a pen by a future president. With the Wilderness bill, it's written here by Idahoans, with Idahoans' input. People know where they stand."
In a matter of weeks, Senator Jim Risch and Congressman Mike Simpson and the various interest groups at the table agreed to a compromise wilderness bill.
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But the bill still had to get through the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, where the Congressman's previous wilderness bills had foundered on the rocky shoals of congressional politics.
"I can still remember when I dropped the first wilderness bill of the ten in the hopper, and then it goes to printing. And I walked up to the parliamentarian, and I said, 'well, that could be the end of my political career.' And he looked at me and asked, 'Why is that?' And I said, 'It's a little controversial.'"
Before he dropped his new wilderness bill into the hopper, Congressman Simpson had handwritten a note on its first page: "The Elvis version -- It's now or never." At that moment, Mike Simpson did not know if his latest plan would succeed.
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For our 2016 show "Beyond the White Clouds," I asked Congressman Simpson to explain how his Elvis bill had cleared the hurdles with a "unanimous" vote.
"Well, you know, we put it on suspension. And in the House, when it passes on suspension, it's usually by voice vote. And nobody voted against it. Anybody could have come down and asked for a roll call on it, and nobody did, so essentially it passed by unanimous consent in the House.
"When we sent it over to the Senate, a bill had been introduced before in the Senate, so they had held hearings in previous years. And we decided to try a procedure, which is, you hold the bill at the desk; you never refer it to committee; and then you bring it up by unanimous consent in the Senate, and pass it. But that has to have the consent of every senator, because any senator can raise an objection, and it won't happen.
"And, in fact, when my chief of staff, Lindsay Slater, came up with the idea ‑‑ it's a very rarely used procedure ‑‑ the staff on the Senate side of the committee said, 'Oh, don't do that; it will hurt you. You'll never get it done if you do that,' and all that kind of stuff. And we said, 'What have we got to lose? Let's go for it.'
"So Senator Risch helped us, and he made sure that on the Republican side none of the objections came from the Republican side. And Martin Heinrich, a senator from New Mexico, a Democrat, helped us on the Democratic side. And surprise, surprise it worked!"
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Fifteen years to get to that point. Thousands of miles traveled. Dozens and dozens of discussions and speeches and backroom negotiations and cajoling and learning what the various user groups wanted and were willing to settle for, and working hard to keep both Sun Valley and Challis in the fold.
And above all, being willing to compromise where necessary. That's a dirty word these days: Compromise.
“Is this a perfect bill? Absolutely not," said Congressman Simpson. "This is not the bill any of us would have written. Is it a good compromise? I'll leave that to the judgment of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Some people get so wrapped up in their ideological beliefs that they forget other people are just as wrapped up in their ideological beliefs.”
I asked the Congressman if he'd be willing to tell us who won and who lost.
"Well, in any compromise, in any collaborative effort people have to give up a little bit of what they want in order for the greater good to accomplish the goal.
"And if you talk to the recreationists, the snow‑machiners, the mountain bikers, the trail bikers, the people that like the outdoor recreation stuff on motorized vehicles -- they gave up some. But we maintained most of their access to their areas that are really important to them.
"The environmentalists gave up some areas that they would have liked seen put in wilderness, so it's a smaller area than some would have liked to have seen.
"That's the nature of a compromise. But when you can walk away from it and say, overall, that this is a good deal, and I think everybody can say that."
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But some groups had to swallow hard. Craig Gehrke told us that he lost friends and support over this one. "A lot of groups urged us to just walk away and boycott it," said the leader of the Idaho Wilderness Society. "There were folks who argued that we were too willing to compromise, that we didn't get enough. Several groups told us you can never trust this Republican.”
Craig had signed a petition supporting a Boulder-White Clouds Wilderness in 1981. He told me it was the first conservation action of his life. The future of the White Clouds had been a matter of importance to him for more than 30 years.
"We didn't walk away because the thing we saw Simpson trying to do, there was no question he honestly wanted to see the White Clouds protected. We'd known all along that this was going to be difficult. We were working with a Republican sponsor. We were going to be working with a Congress that was not wilderness friendly.
"But there was always enough in his bill and just enough in his demeanor and his manner of trying to work this through, that we owed it to the White Clouds to do this."
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I'm impressed that taking a chance on Wilderness did not hurt Mike Simpson politically. Instead, it elevated his status in Congress and in Idaho. It was clear that Wilderness was no longer the dirty word it had once been.
As his wife told me at a celebratory gathering at Boise State University, sponsored by Idaho Public Television and the Andrus Center for Public Policy, "For Mike, the White Clouds Wilderness is the gift that just keeps on giving."
Congressman Mike Simpson was philosophical when we talked with him several months after his success. "Even if the bill had not been signed into law, this effort would have been successful," he told us, "because we now have people talking with each other that would never have talked before, would never have sat down at the same table. Now they actually talk to each other.
"They don't have to agree, but 90% of it is talking. And that's what people are starting to do."
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In the Christian Science Moniter newspaper, the headline was "How Mike Simpson's triumph for wilderness was a triumph for Congress."
"This is how the Congress works to represent the interests of the American people. We might not agree that some areas in this country are worth protecting for future generations, that areas that are so beautiful that they literally take your breath away don’t need to be protected from mining interests.
"But one congressman believed that to be the case, and he used all of his relationships and all of his know-how to reach common ground with his constituents, his colleagues and with the president, to hammer out a solution that will preserve a unique spot in America for the foreseeable future.
"This is how Congress is supposed to work. This is how our democracy is supposed to function."
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