By Dave Smith, Victor
About fifty years ago, when I was around twelve years old, my parents built a summer cabin a few miles down from Painted Rock Reservoir, just a short drive away from the Blue Joint Wilderness. My family and friends spent countless days up there – fishing, camping, hiking, riding horses and mountain biking.
Anyone that knows the area well knows that there isn’t much of value in the Blue Joint, as least as resources go. Sure, there’s Lodge Pole Pine thick as the hair on a hound’s hide, but very little timber of any real value. Back in the day, rumor was that Pegasus Mining Co. had gravel assayed at .05 oz/ton of gold. At the time, that was considered about the least amount that could make a profit, and that was with heavy machinery and cyanide leach ponds. I have to wonder if that wasn’t the impetus to create and include the Blue Joint in the WSA to begin with forty years ago. To protect this area from cyanide leach mining and preserve an area of wilderness for us, our children, and theirs after.
At twenty-three years of age, I took a job as packer and guide for an outfitter who had a special use permit in the Blue Joint. The next five years gave me the opportunity to become intimately familiar with the area. The Blue Joint is bordered by wilderness and has no roads. It serves as an invaluable wildlife corridor from Idaho into the Bitterroot. And it has a system of trails unmatched in western Montana in both their diversity and history. You can start at Nez Perce Pass and go east to Castle Rock, on the same trail Natives used to travel to buffalo country. That same trail was later used by the white man to access the gold diggings at Bannock from Lewiston, Idaho. From Nez Perce pass, you can also travel south along the State Line Trail, where you can drop off at Jack the Ripper and join the main Blue Joint at the creek bottom. Or you can keep on the State Line Trail past Two Buck Springs, where you can again drop off to the main Blue Joint headwaters. If you like, you can stay up and go over Razorback Ridge, past the “Little Blue” and down, or take the Cole Ridge Trail down to the West Fork River again.
I would guess that all that area, with all those trails, is only 15 square miles, as the raven flies. That’s a sizeable chunk, but on a map, it’s about the size of a blackhead on the face of western Montana. But as it is today, as pristine wilderness, it’s priceless.
If you are interested in extracting a trophy bull elk, you couldn’t find a better place. I packed a few people in and out of there, back in the day. The guys I packed for were only there once or twice, but they never forgot that back country experience. I think they’d be saddened to know it was no longer protected. Fact is, that area is closer to our community than it is to any other in the country. In that way, we’re blessed. But it doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to all Americans. As much as it belongs to you and me, it belongs to those I packed in back in the day: the longhaired kid from Pennsylvania, the truck driver buddies from Ohio, the dentist and his friend from Georgia, the deep-sea fishing guide from Florida, and all the rest – it belongs to them equally as much as it does to me. It belongs to all of us, as the current national treasure that it is.
The true value of the Blue Joint WSA is realized if it remains protected wild backcountry, to be explored and hunted by the next generation of adventurers. I take issue with the idea that the Blue Joint isn’t a good candidate for wilderness designation. It’s perfect for it. And before that current designation is changed, it needs another thorough evaluation. For us, for our children, and for all Americans.