Speaking of rules, here's the language pertaining to airstrips in the Act which established/re-established the Frank:

SEC. 7. (a) Within the River of No Return Wilderness and the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness additions designated by this Act:

(1) the landing of aircraft, where this use has become established prior to the date of enactment of this Act shall be permitted to continue subject to such restrictions as the Secretary deems desirable: Provided, That the Secretary shall not permanently close or render unserviceable any aircraft landing, strip in regular use on national forest lands on the date of enactment of this Act for reasons other than extreme danger to (aircraft, and in any case not without the express written concurrence of the agency of the State of Idaho charged with evaluating the safety of backcountry airstrips;

I'm not a fan of "strip bagging" and I totally understand the frustration and fear of "locals" that this kind of activity engenders. My only point here is, this is what would have to be done to close these strips. And, yes, I realize there is some controversy as to whether some of these strips were actually "in regular use" at the time of the Act.

Secondly, Todd was NOT flying a Carbon Cub. His airplane was and is a PA-18 Super Cub.

Third, the point of this video was intended to explore some of the hazards associated with operating in wilderness settings, NOT to explore the issues of Big W wilderness. There are lessons to be learned here.

One point that wasn't discussed in the video was that the pilot was from the midwest. I doubt that he was very familiar with (or thinking about) the relatively high density altitudes existing at Dewey Moore at the time of the accident. I suspect that he looked at the space in that canyon from the perspective of a "flatlander", and felt comfortable in attempting a turn around.

But, there's a vast difference in turn radius between a 2000 foot Density Altitude and a 6000 foot or greater density altitude, which was likely the case at the time of the accident. And, he tried to keep it tight and go back down stream, instead of using as much of the upstream canyon as possible to accomplish the turn.

Anyway, thanks to these folks for their willingness to discuss publicly a very painful episode in their lives. Thankfully, nobody died in this deal, but it was no doubt a close thing.

So, I'd commend folks here to go back and look at that video in the context of the safety issues involved, and perhaps leave the political BS to other forums.

MTV

Wilderness aviation access IS going to change...it's a simple numbers thing. Every hour of every day there are more people and fewer square feet of the earth worth standing on. The demands on the paltry few wilderness areas still in existence is going to increase, and more rules and laws will follow. You only have to look at how river management has morphed over the years to see what's in store for backcountry aviation.

There seems to be two main schools of thought in the backcountry flying community. One is "Lets self-regulate, reduce our impact, and make voluntary concessions before they're forced on us. It's not only good for aviation, it's just the right thing to do." The other is "To hell with anyone who doesn't like what I'm doing...I've got as much right to use the wilderness as anyone else, and I don't care how it affects those namby greenie whiners. Hurumph!"

The second attitude seems to be the more prevalent, and since we all get lumped in together in the eyes of non-aviators, I think we're really cutting our own throats here. In addition to alienating pretty much every other user of the wilderness, strip-bagging behavior is getting us a worse and worse seat at the table when the laws are rewritten...which they most assuredly will be, eventually.

Given the amount of push-back aviation in the Frank (especially in Big Creek) has been getting for years, it's dumbfounding to me that anyone thinks strip-bagging is acceptable behavior, much less something you'd publicize with a video. It just makes it all that much harder to present a convincing case for not closing the Big Creek 4...a case that will NOT be made to fellow aviators, but which must be proven to the public as a whole.

I've yet to meet a single person who wasn't an aviator, regardless of their environmental viewpoint, who can fathom why airplanes are exempt from the rules governing everything else in wilderness areas. It's a VERY hard sell to anyone who even understands wilderness designation, much less has a passionate interest in it.

Personally I think that aviation access to the Frank is an overall positive thing, even to non-aviators. It gives access options to many people, in exchange for a limited but significant noise signature. But once that noise signature gets to a certain point, the negative impact is going to outweigh the positive for the majority of wilderness visitors. If that noise signature is being generated primarily by people who are using the airstrips for nothing but the challenge of bagging them, we're sunk.

This is a serious question: what constitutes "strip bagging" and how is it different from what people confess to on this site all the time?

Is it hard to imagine a BCP regular saying "went out this weekend, stopped at Dewey Moore for rhubarb, took off from there and went to. . .?" I feel like I read something like that every Monday, and nobody ever criticizes the writer.

So, in all seriousness, what's the difference between strip bagging and just bragging about where you've been?

Whale hail, everybody else thought their opinion was worth putting up about this issue so I guess I will too.
Thanks Phil for originally posting this as a means to the ultimate end of hopefully helping others not to make the same mistake. Which I’m sure was the intent of the makers of the video.
I can guarantee after reading this thread , a lot of people will be more mindful of their flying technique in these places .
We don’t have mountains where I’m at here in Georgia, We do have hills and high D.A. though. I am constantly aware of my mounts limitations having only 90 hp and a little on the heavy side on them hot days, Especially when maneuvering low and slow as I always do.
And on the issue of bagging the strips, I fear of the Battle is already lost to the wacko crowd of environmentalist and crazies. This kind of gets over into politics, which we will not discuss here, There is a reason us rednecks in the south are particular about the people that move here, we love people to come ,just don’t bring your crazy ass mindset with you when you do. we love for people to enjoy the freedom and liberty we enjoy!

I'm with skierman and Hammer. I find myself thinking about one of the first things I saw after we left the McCall airport to go mountain biking in 1987. A late 50's Dodge pickup with a bumper sticker that said "Wilderness, land of no use". That guy was unhappy because the saw mill was no more and the railroad tracks were taken up and the tourist crowd was taking over. If things would have continued as they were, airstrips and bagging would be a non issue. I also remember a day in the early 90's that Clay Lacy showed up with his Pilatus Porter and took a bunch of friends out to hit lots of the strips. A friend of mine at the time had a place at Pistol Creek and went along. At the time everybody thought that was cool and the McCall airport was a better place to hang out IMHO.

StuBob wrote:This is a serious question: what constitutes "strip bagging" and how is it different from what people confess to on this site all the time?

Is it hard to imagine a BCP regular saying "went out this weekend, stopped at Dewey Moore for rhubarb, took off from there and went to. . .?" I feel like I read something like that every Monday, and nobody ever criticizes the writer.

So, in all seriousness, what's the difference between strip bagging and just bragging about where you've been?

I guess a simple definition would be landing a airstrip for no reason other than to land it...a condition which is exacerbated exponentially by multiple aircraft going out together, and/or going from one strip to the next just to land it, take a selfie, and take off again.

It's not in alignment with the reasons for grandfathering air access into the Frank, and it creates a noise signature which is pretty unacceptable to anyone else in the drainage. Posting videos of strip-bagging doesn't make it any worse, but it does make the behavior obvious to people who didn't happen to be in the Frank that day. FS administrators and wilderness advocates apposed to airstrips, for instance.

StuBob wrote:This is a serious question: what constitutes "strip bagging" and how is it different from what people confess to on this site all the time?

Is it hard to imagine a BCP regular saying "went out this weekend, stopped at Dewey Moore for rhubarb, took off from there and went to. . .?" I feel like I read something like that every Monday, and nobody ever criticizes the writer.

So, in all seriousness, what's the difference between strip bagging and just bragging about where you've been?

Who cares exactly how you define it? Strip-bagging is just a convenient term, anyway - there are lots of behaviors that are unappreciated in the backcountry. How do we even begin to self-police if every time someone suggests we adopt more reasonable etiquette you get this kind of hair-splitting “well, if I do “X”, what about that?” Or the “it’s just ignorant innocence” or “but was it _deliberate_??” kind of stuff. If you’re being an idiot in the backcountry, you should just know it. Am I being a courteous user? No? Then don’t do it.

This question of “I see people post videos every week an no one says anything,” well, that needs to be addressed. It certainly doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable, in my opinion.

The reason I don’t say something for every post is partly because A) if I did, that’s all I’d do, and B) because if you even hint that someone is not practicing great etiquette, it starts a complete shitstorm that ends up pretty much with the debate you’ve seen here. I hope for - and invite - more people to join me in speaking up.

I don’t have the time or energy to do this for every post, but every once in a while I see something or get particularly agitated after witnessing the idiocy in the backcountry that I feel compelled to put my neck out there and call it like I see it. And you pretty much get this thread.

Personally, I wish the IAA would take a greater role in promoting conservation as a value, that the groups that literally make a living by exploiting the backcountry through their content creation (for YouTube, product endorsements, fly-ins, etc) would be denounced and just go away, and that we would adopt a self-policing attitude before user limits are imposed.

Think about the rafters: they went through this decades ago and in the end, the solution was to lock down the river. Today, if you want to go down the river you can hire a guide or you can put in for a once-in-a-lifetime lottery private permit and cross your fingers (or go basically in the winter). And that’s it.

Right now, things are kind of going our way because the Fish and Game has basically given the finger to the environmentalists, but they don’t run the Frank and I personally worry that F&G’s aggressive moves recently will kind of kick the hornet’s nest and re-animate the opposition. I don’t think it’s much of a debate that pilot user numbers are up and our behavior is worse than ever, so I doubt this will turn out well in the end.

Perversely, one ray of hope, is the declining pilot population. I mean, it is declining isn't it? At a good sized fly-in I went to last week, the winner of the "youngest pilot", was 50 freaking years old! YouTube is the big game changer, and it's too late to put that genie back in the bottle. It's hard for me to tell if there is really more back country ops, or just more publicity about it? For sure there are more non aviators/more people all the time. I am positive the minuscule percent of the general population we pilots represent, not to mention we back country pilots, an even smaller percent group, is getting more mini all the time as compared to the rest of the herd. Think about this too much, and it will make you want to go out and fly as much and as often as possible, before it all goes away.

My understanding is that while overall GA flight hours / pilot population is decreasing, backcountry aviation is booming. 20 years ago a kitfox was a quaint affordable homebuilt and the cub market was just opening up.

mtv wrote:"...the point of this video was intended to explore some of the hazards associated with operating in wilderness settings, NOT to explore the issues of Big W wilderness. There are lessons to be learned here.

Folks like them really don't see the "Big W" as anything more than an Instagram opportunity. I doubt any of them have been further than an airstrip wilderness access point than they would get out of their car for a super sized Blizzard at Dairy Queen in their home town. It's not a motorized amusement park, even if a few people want to pretend the majority agree with them that it is. So I think it's amusing when people get bent out of shape and call people "whackos" and "crazies" when they get fingers wagged at them by people with a more familiar (and statutory) concept of "Big W" in mind.

In over 40 years of hiking, working, and flying in the area, both before and after the Big W designation, I think the "peak annoyance" was reached some years ago. GA is dying. The private pilot population is headed towards a fraction of what it was when I began (~370k now vs ~570k then). The traffic in the back country has increased a lot since back then, but seems to be growing less rapidly than visits and impacts to other wild places. A much wider range of skills and awareness is going in as well. By and large, most are going in to make new personal and family memories and discover the real "Big W". The small groups of "b(r)aggers" are a pretty small, damned annoying subset, and there is literally nothing to do about it without restrictions and creating a new brand of pain in the ass for everyone else. It isn't political. It's practical.

I've had a lot of personally significant stretches in the Frank and Selway Bitterroots, chasing bobcats, cougars, and coyotes for science, watching bighorns butt heads in September, finding Boone and Crocket bulls practically every other day or so in season, going for weeks on longer trips on a light pack and lots of fish along the way, floating on its rivers, and skiing in some of its remoter areas in winter. I don't feel quite as badly anymore when someone craters while b(r)agging. It is to be expected with that small, annoying group of people the same way as any other outdoor motorized hobby. I say that when most of my adventures were made possible through conscientious access to many of these airstrips, especially getting older. There are still quieter spaces away from the b(r)agger crowd to enjoy. They'll never care about what I or anyone else cares about back there in the grand scheme of things. They eventually leave to go back to their nutty HOA meetings about christmas decoration and grass mowing violations and traffic back home, and never even know where it was they were- it's all camouflage to them. Fine with me. Their loss, and because they didn't show their kids anything special, their kids won't be begging to come back either (no instagram access, after all). Sort of self-correcting, and things haven't gotten as bad as they would have otherwise. Those that do see the Big W picture will come back and preserve it, and so will their kids.

If there are regulations made to limit access to all because of the b(r)aggers, it will be a sad day. I'll still be able to visit many areas on foot for many years with any luck. I will feel badly for the families that may be locked out even as the wild places in the Frank become wilder. And I'll be really pissed off. The b(r)aggers will just find somewhere else to annoy.

skiermanmike wrote: that the groups that literally make a living by exploiting the backcountry through their content creation (for YouTube, product endorsements, fly-ins, etc) would be denounced and just go away

Ohhhhhh......I wonder who this thinly veiled slam is aimed at. I have a pretty good idea.

Yeah yeah, shoot the messenger it’s fine. It’s not just one person, but it *is* a problem because it encourages the same shitty antics.

Mostly last century, l made many unimproved fields and off airport stops in the West.. I never saw another airplane and never encountered this kind of situation. This reminds me of our Village Stability Operations in Afganistan where Afgans sought honor, revenge, stability, and governance. All, save one, of those objectives are guaranteed here by our Constitution. We didn't tell the Afgans we would teach them to slaughter their enemies like civilized men. We also didn't insist they let revenge go. Here we do.

skiermanmike wrote:Yeah yeah, shoot the messenger it’s fine. It’s not just one person, but it *is* a problem because it encourages the same shitty antics.

So how do you propose it get fixed? Set limits to how many planes can come to a strip in a day? Or set how long one has to stay a a strip so it doesn't count as bagged? Or keep anyone that's not from Idaho away? Who's going to pay to enforce that? And who's going to cover all the money that the strips and airports lose from fuel sales and donation boxes? I'm just curious what you think the solution is.

It's kind of akin to these people that buy near an airport and then demand the airport be shutdown because it's to noisy. And that's happening a lot these days. I feel like the people complaining about airplane noise dont care if they hear one airplane or 10, they will complain just as hard either way.

Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk

A1Skinner wrote:So how do you propose it get fixed? Set limits to how many planes can come to a strip in a day? Or set how long one has to stay a a strip so it doesn't count as bagged?
...

I actually think both of those ideas are good ones, and I think that the quicker aviators adopt them voluntarily, the longer it will be before they become law. Mark my words...there will be a lottery for landing in the Frank, just like there is a lottery for floating in the Frank. As for enforcing it, that's easy...the penalties for violating the rules will be so painful that no sane person will contemplate it... just like it is for floating.

I've long advocated for a 12 hour "rule" for Wilderness airstrips: if you land at 0700 hrs, you don't take off till 1900 hrs, or later. If that was the accepted practice that aviators voluntarily adhered to, then the occasional person getting some instruction on how to land a airstrip or shuttling in loads would be the exception rather than the norm, and there would be a lot less contention about aviation in the Wilderness.

Oh...just what phone did you use to post?

Hammer wrote:

A1Skinner wrote:So how do you propose it get fixed? Set limits to how many planes can come to a strip in a day? Or set how long one has to stay a a strip so it doesn't count as bagged?
...

I actually think both of those ideas are good ones, and I think that the quicker aviators adopt them voluntarily, the longer it will be before they become law. Mark my words...there will be a lottery for landing in the Frank, just like there is a lottery for floating in the Frank. As for enforcing it, that's easy...the penalties for violating the rules will be so painful that no sane person will contemplate it... just like it is for floating.

I've long advocated for a 12 hour "rule" for Wilderness airstrips: if you land at 0700 hrs, you don't take off till 1900 hrs, or later. If that was the accepted practice that aviators voluntarily adhered to, then the occasional person getting some instruction on how to land a airstrip or shuttling in loads would be the exception rather than the norm, and there would be a lot less contention about aviation in the Wilderness.

Oh...just what phone did you use to post?

Haha. Had to reset my phone and it turned my signature back on. Figured you'd catch me on that.
I dont mind that idea, but a 12hr period seems a bit long. A guy could easily get trapped if he doesn't get out as early as planned.
The trickier one is setting how many planes can come to a strip. Say the limit is 10 per day and you happen to be #11. How do you know there was 10 there already until you get slapped with a huge fine or whatever you think is fair punishment?

A1Skinner wrote:

Hammer wrote:

A1Skinner wrote:So how do you propose it get fixed? Set limits to how many planes can come to a strip in a day? Or set how long one has to stay a a strip so it doesn't count as bagged?
...

I actually think both of those ideas are good ones, and I think that the quicker aviators adopt them voluntarily, the longer it will be before they become law. Mark my words...there will be a lottery for landing in the Frank, just like there is a lottery for floating in the Frank. As for enforcing it, that's easy...the penalties for violating the rules will be so painful that no sane person will contemplate it... just like it is for floating.

I've long advocated for a 12 hour "rule" for Wilderness airstrips: if you land at 0700 hrs, you don't take off till 1900 hrs, or later. If that was the accepted practice that aviators voluntarily adhered to, then the occasional person getting some instruction on how to land a airstrip or shuttling in loads would be the exception rather than the norm, and there would be a lot less contention about aviation in the Wilderness.

Oh...just what phone did you use to post?

Haha. Had to reset my phone and it turned my signature back on. Figured you'd catch me on that.
I dont mind that idea, but a 12hr period seems a bit long. A guy could easily get trapped if he doesn't get out as early as planned.
The trickier one is setting how many planes can come to a strip. Say the limit is 10 per day and you happen to be #11. How do you know there was 10 there already until you get slapped with a huge fine or whatever you think is fair punishment?

Phones...hahaha...

So, the whole idea here is that a 12-hour rule is the goal of everyone going in...if you know the weather is going to shit in less than that, you don't go, or you go knowing you'll stay until you can get out. Landing a wilderness strip just to eat a sandwich and cast a couple flies isn't considered proper etiquette by the community, so fewer people do it.

As for numbers...well, I guess it'd start as a voluntary thing, applicable mostly to the assorted Johnson Creek or Garden Valley fly-in's, which tend to aggravate and concentrate strip-bagging. Folks at the fly-ins draw straws for the strips they want to fly into, and that's all who get to go to them as a condition of attending the fly-in. Or some such thing.

It's not perfect, but its a start...a way for aviators to show that they understand and respect the impact that their unique access has on every other wilderness user, and that they are willing to self-limit.

I think the future will bring a permit system to land at many if not most of the airstrips in the Frank. You apply online, get it for the days you want to be there or you don't, and that's that. Good luck with the weather. A simple trail camera or trail crew or overflight will tattle on anyone in violation, and while you can fight it, the juice simply won't be worth the squeeze for violators.

I don't like that future, but I see it coming closer and closer every year, and we're doing it to ourselves. We are literally running like cattle into the abattoir, bitching and snapping deranging every cow that suggests that this path of action might not be in our best interest.

This is a great discussion, but inevitably as these discussions go, it ends up dividing and entrenching opposite sides even more so.
We need to rephrase it in a way where we can find common ground and goals, which we all agree is to preserve airplane access to these wild places.
This is not about NIMBYs and outsiders, this is about respect for all outlooks and perspectives.
From the local perspective, they access these places multiple times a year, and loosing that access would be devastating to their flying pursuits.
From the non-local perspective, they come once every couple of years and want to maximize their time and enjoyment of these places in a short period of time.
Both have equal right to be there and enjoy it. The locals spread their enjoyment over the whole year, whereas non locals compress it into a short timeframe.

This year at JC, at the much smaller, non sponsored Super Cub (and their ilk) event, I once again did not go anywhere else. The sight of a half dozen giddy out of state Carbon Cubbers (what they were, not a pejorative) taking off to hit as many strips as quick as they could as many times as they could, made the idea somewhat repugnant. Just for purely selfish reasons, not really thinking of the rafters.....I just didn't like the idea of narrow canyon flying with many others, and don't find the strips that challenging and really don't like the surrounding terrain they lie in. As in zero options in case of trouble, and then not being able to drive a truck in to pick up the pieces due to the wilderness designation.

With today's fancy devices like Spot, it could be easy to regulate flying in the Frank when that happens. I think you could record what you did and pay accordingly. Want to just bag strips----pay through the nose etc. That time I met the woman at Big Creek, I never heard of Indian Creek until we walked over to the Big Creek lodge and I asked if there was another strip that was similar to BC for my inexperience. The whole two days was spur of the moment and could not have been planned. The morning we woke at Indian Creek we were fogged in until mid day----another unplanned thing.