Hoodoo Pass News Today

The conference room of an engineering firm in central Missoula seemed like an odd place to describe the ecological wonders of the Great Burn straddling the Montana/Idaho border.

The heart of the Great Burn landscape is the Hoodoo Recommended Wilderness Area, spanning from west of Lolo Pass to Hoodoo Pass, southwest of Superior. The Hoodoo RWA, in the same shape since 1986, takes up most of the Hoodoo Roadless Area — the largest roadless area of Forest Service land in the Lower 48. The looming change in snowmobile access comes as the Nez Perce-Clearwater and Lolo national forests each revise their forest plans.

The conference room of an engineering firm in central Missoula seemed like an odd place to describe the ecological wonders of the Great Burn straddling the Montana/Idaho border.

The conference room of an engineering firm in central Missoula seemed like an odd place to describe the ecological wonders of the Great Burn straddling the Montana/Idaho border.

The trail, a zigzag that drapes repeatedly across the ridge and the border between the two states about 47 miles west of Missoula, used to be a marquee backcountry ride for mountain bikers. That ended in 2012 when the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest, which controls the Idaho side of the trail, approved a new travel management plan that barred bicycles from its portion of the trail.

The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest supervisor trumpeted her new forest plan as the best compromise for all.

The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest supervisor trumpeted her new forest plan as the best compromise for all.

The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest supervisor trumpeted her new forest plan as the best compromise for all.

For the first time in more than a decade, snowmobilers and mountain bikers are on the cusp of regaining legal access across more than 40,000 acres of mountainous terrain known as the Great Burn.

A travel management plan that forest officials implemented in 2012 closed the area to winter motorized use, putting an end to legal use of motorized over-snow travel.