Richard Layne Photography
Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Idaho
Big Sand Lake sunset in July, located in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness six miles west of the Idaho/Montana border.
I think I know what you might be wanting to say to me right now. You might be thinking Idaho is not part of Montana's wildernesses and maybe I ought to take a class in geography. Well actually I probably ought to. Although it might not be concerning this topic.
Idaho has the bulk of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. The Montana portion is perhaps 60 miles long and at best, 15 miles wide. In short, when I head up one of the Bitterroot Valley's canyons I'm just getting started when here comes Idaho's border. So after decades of travel in the S-B, you bet I see Idaho's Selway-Bitterroot a lot.
Though I have never looked up the stats on this, I believe Idaho's portion of the S-B has a layout of about 80 miles from east to west and perhaps 60 miles north to south. I say this without counting the two peninsula roads that go to Paradise on the southeast end and the Elk Summit road on the Northeast end. That means there is an awful lot of neighborhood out there to get around in.
With thousands of miles of travel inside the Selway-Bitterroot of Idaho there is still an incredible amount of territory I have yet to visit. Never the less, the result is I have thousands of photos of the S-B. It is my intention to give just a sampling on this page, which I will change every now and again.
The photo above is on the beach on Big Sand Lake 8 miles east of Elk Summit Guard Station and 15 miles west of the Blodgett canyon trail head near Hamilton Montana. I saw this view for the first time in July of 1965. Scoutmaster Jim Whitlock took Corvallis's Boyscout Troop 29 on a 7 day 50 mile hike. What an incredible experience for this very troublesome 14 year old delinquent! I haven't been right since! Jim published an account of that trip in Hamilton's weekly Western News in December of that year. 40 years later my wife Carleen, our friend Monte and I repeated the trip in its entirety at the same time in July. On top of that I now have a preliminary plan of having a look at this route on a winter trip . . . maybe real soon too.
More to come on this story and the photos. rgl
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The top 5 photos on this page were captured with the Nikon D70. While I no longer have this wonderful machine (My replacement is the Nikon D2X since 10-05), it certainly told me my days with film were over. Plus it influenced my decision to stay with Nikon. From the D50 to the D200, things sure aren't what they were in 2004 when I got my first slr digital (D70). The photos that start with "ma" are 645 medium format shot with Mamiya Sekor. The "fa" photo files are 35mm and taken with Nikon bodies.rgl
Copyright (c) 2007 Richard Layne Photography. All rights reserved.