Hey guys the Idaho Fish and Game is trying to increase access points in and around the Frank Church. They have reopened the Cougar Ranch on their land and some how have got the ball rolling to get the Forest Service to consider reopening Hoodoo meadows. Of course there is a comment period and the only ones commenting are anti airplane groups, claiming mechanized equipment disrupts their solitude. We need to comment if we want it open. For those of you that don't know Hoodoo is in the head of yellow jacket creek, it must be close to 8000 feet in elevation and over 2000 feet long. It is out of the wilderness but really close to the boundary. The road to Middle Fork peak goes right by it. It is about 10 miles from the Bighorn Craig's campground, cathedral rock and cathedral lake. The really attractive thing is Yellow jacket lake is about 1 mile by trail, its stocked by Fish and Game. There are not many runways close to high mountain lake in Idaho. Its up in the timber, land to the north up stream, take off down stream to the south. The last landing on it before they closed it was 1985, I was on it back in the day.Its grown up with trees now and is unusable. When we comment we need to point out it would lessen impact on the runways in the wilderness from a camping and training flight perspective, be added safety in the event of an emergency landing/forced weather landing, and would be great access for the public on public lands, especially the disabled, medically limited population. I stressed in my comments that the frank church and its adjacent areas has millions of acres of solitude, and only a handful of access points, the access points are there to get to the solitude, not interfere with it. Don't mention airstrip bagging, the solitude lovers and the forest service detest that. If anyone was on it prior to it being closed mention that, we need to show historic use, I also mentioned we have lost over 50% of our historic access in Idaho due to closed runways, and unmaintained trails and bridges, and there is more demand for remote places then ever, everyone is limited to the few access points and cant get along, we need more access to disperse the public.
To comment here is the contact info:
District Ranger Ken Gebhardt
North Fork Ranger District
11 Casey Road
P.O. Box 180
North Fork Idaho 83466
phone 208-865-2700
Fax 280-8652738
[email protected]
The deadline is coming right up so get your comments is right away, I am new to this deal and old so if i didn't get it in the right area to be visible help me out, if i broke protocol by doing this let me know, just trying to help spread the word and get us another runway in Idaho.

I'm confused - is there an official comment period? Usually there's a website with a proposed plan, alternatives, and a comment section, but I can't find one. I've been following this as closely as I can - there's been very little info getting out as far as I can tell - and I'm not aware of this. Short of just sending emails, is there anything more official?

Also - Cougar Ranch? Huh? Can you provide more details on that?

IAA is holding this one close to the vest maybe in hopes to keep it off anti radar for as long as possible. I know their leadership lurks here so maybe someone might hear something from them. Last I heard the FS had to do a environmental impact study to determine if is was even possible. The IDFG was going to provide some good funding for the the project once the FS approved it. I'm pretty excited about it. I learned about Hoodoo around 10 years ago and thought it would be a great spot for some solitude.

I couldn't find an official comment period on this topic but I do know the Salmon-Challis NF is working on a major Forest Plan revision and asked for comments/feedback on their preliminary documents: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/scnf/landmanagement/planning/?cid=fseprd544732

If you choose to provide feedback please be professional. Name calling and expressing your dislike for the fed isn't going to get us anywhere.

The way I understand it the Forest Service did a pre comment gathering effort, only soliciting certain groups that would be affected, Idaho horseman, IOGA etc,to see if its worth doing the complete process with the public comment process your looking for.I am not sure if they included IAA or not, but I think they need to hear from us. One of the involved people I spoke with said they had not heard from our side.
As far as the cougar ranch goes its across the river from Mahoney, they are waiting for the State aeronautics to do an inspection on it and file with the FAA as a public runway and it will be open. We flew the F&G employees out after they got it all fix up, they did a nice job and its a great location. Andrew spoke about it at the expo.

Did anything ever come of this?

Updates here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=53822
]
]Also, Cougar Ranch is open.
History and announcement herein https://idahoaviation.com/u/resources/2 ... online.pdf
A landing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aaSXP0gTwI

Timbuk2 wrote:Updates here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=53822
]
]Also, Cougar Ranch is open.
History and announcement herein https://idahoaviation.com/u/resources/2 ... online.pdf
A landing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aaSXP0gTwI

Thanks for the update, sounds like with any luck they'll have the ball rolling this summer. Awesome!

I've checked out Cougar Ranch, cool spot.

Looks like the USFS site shows this project as cancelled now, can't seem to find a "why" though... Still looking into it.