One thing that impresses the new Harriman State Park manager is that people are passionate about the park.

“That has been the biggest surprise, just the passion that people have for the park,” said park manager Mark Eliot who started in May. “It means so much to so many people from such a wide geographic area. I’ve never seen anything like that. People are willing to do what they can.”

Eliot took over for John Sullivan, who left about a year ago. Eliot is new to the state park system, coming from the Idaho Department of Lands where he worked in fire prevention.

This is his first winter at Harriman, and he’s learning that the park just south of Island Park is just as busy under a blanket of snow as it is during summer.

“I’m still learning grooming schedules and winter access and different usage,” Eliot said, “the process of what we can do to make the park a more enjoyable experience for visitors.”

Interpretive park ranger Morgan Smith reported that the park attracted more than 400 people last Saturday during its free access day.

“Our winter is just as busy as summer,” Morgan said. “We’ve got good winter trails and grooming, so it brings in a whole bunch of people. It’s been really steady here, especially over the winter break. I think we get more locals here in the winter than in the summer.”

Eliot said he rode a fat bike for the first time during the Saturday free access day.

“One of the Nordic ski patrol lent me their fat bike,” he said. “That was the first time I’d ever been on one. That was a lot of work.”

Eliot said during the summer he spent a good deal of time hiking and mountain biking some Harriman’s 24 miles of trails to become familiar with the park. This winter he’s been cross-country skiing the trails in his spare time.

Eliot is considering organizing an advisory committee to take input and make recommendations on issues such as grooming trails for different uses and separating skate skiers from fat bikers.

“We’re not going to be able to make everybody happy,” he said. “But we’ll do our best.”

The park’s three main winter user groups will come together Feb. 1 for the fourth annual Moose on the Loose winter triathlon. The race involves 6 miles of fat biking, 1.5 miles of snowshoeing and 6 miles of cross-country skiing. For more information on Moose on the Loose, go to trithemoose.com.

Another busy park feature during the winter and summer months is its rentals. The park rents out for overnight use several buildings and yurts. Some of the larger log-cabin-style buildings will sleep up to 38 people. Yurts and smaller buildings generally sleep six. Reservations are generally filled months in advance.

The historic buildings in the Railroad Ranch area were once owned by Edward H. Harriman, the chairman of Union Pacific Railroad.

“(Buildings) are booked pretty much throughout the winter,” Smith said. “Our slowest seasons are April and November. In winter and summer, they’re booked out all the time.”

For information on facilities and reservations, go to parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/parks/harriman.

Daily entrance fee into the park is $5 per car. There is also a per person grooming fee of $5 for people accessing trails.

“I’m pretty content here, so I’d sure like to stay as long as they have me,” Eliot said.

Kelly Canyon Ski Resort’s recent announcement that it will set aside a free parking area for people seeking access to National Forest land has several winter recreationists happy.

The parking area is on the west end of the lower parking lot and will be open 24/7 once the resort opens Thursday. In recent years, the resort charged $8 per person for a nordic/biking/snowshoeing pass to park on resort property.

“We think there will be about 20 to 30 (parking spots) depending on how unselfish people are when they park and depending on how cooperative individuals are so that the area can be maintained and plowed,” said Dave Stoddard, co-owner of the resort.

Avid Nordic skier and snowshoer Christine Weimer of Rigby called the change “great” news. She said she has joined family and friends on many trips to the Kelly Canyon area in the past before the resort charged for parking.

“It’s just the best place around,” Weimer said.

Stoddard said creating the new parking area has been a multiyear project working with Jefferson County, the Army Corps of Engineers and Rocky Mountain Power. He said power poles needed to be moved, a culvert put in and permits obtained.

“Now that everyone has signed off on all of those things and no more monitoring is required, we’re in a position where we are able to move ahead with the plans that we’ve wanted to do for a long time,” he said, “to make an area available on a 24/7 basis that would be for the biking, hiking, cross-country skiing, snowshoe recreationists.”

In the past, gates were locked when the resort was closed to prevent vandalism, but closing gates would eliminate parking.

“So if people wanted to come early in the morning before they opened or late in the evening or possibly spend the night at the (warming) hut … then they couldn’t because the parking lot was closed or on Sundays it was closed,” said Colby Jacobson a ranger for the Palisades Forest Service District. “Having this parking lot that’s going to be open 24/7 will be really nice.”

The National Forest land beyond the resort boasts several miles of backcountry ski and snowshoe trails.

“It would be convenient to be able to go up there for a short day, just to get out,” said Donna Whitham of Idaho Falls. “Too bad they won’t allow leashed dogs.”

Besides the dog ban, the resort lists a few other prohibitions on its website under the “What To Do” “Nordic” headers for its free parking area.

“No trailers, oversized vehicles, motorized recreational vehicles or pets are allowed in the parking area or anywhere else within the resort special use permit ski area (including the road between the resort and the Y Junction) or on the private property of the resort,” the website says.

Jacobson said the Forest Service is building new signs to indicate where the free parking is for National Forest access.

“We have a lot of people calling and just wanting to be able to get up there,” Jacobson said. “They have been a bit confused on what they are supposed to do. We do expect to have a lot more people coming up there.”

Stoddard said Nordic skiers and fat bikers are invited to check out the resort’s “Shred Trails.”

“The bike trails we made in the summertime, the anticipation is that we will groom those trails for Nordic purposes in the wintertime,” Stoddard said. “A single lift ride up on the chairlift would take people to a spot where they would be able to enjoy some really terrific terrain. It’s all part of the Shred trail system.”

Matt Dungan’s highly successful ice fishing gear business started when he was a boy trapping possums in the woods of Tennessee.

“I was always figuring out trigger mechanisms,” Dungan said. “I would make live catch traps.”

Then as a student at what was then Ricks College in Rexburg, Dave and Gerald Oldham took him ice fishing for the first time at Island Park Reservoir.

“They were just looking at their rod tip and waiting for them to bounce when the fish bit,” he said. “I thought, there’s got to be a better way.”

He made up devices that used the bent rod as a spring with a trigger mechanism to hook a fish when they nibbled on the bait.

“I caught three or four fish with them,” he said about that outing.

The idea was put on a shelf while he studied nursing, got married, bought a house and began working. After a few years, he was living in Rigby and working as a nurse in Idaho Falls. He went ice fishing again with a friend, this time to Strawberry Reservoir in Utah.

“I made up a couple more of these devices, and I caught five or six of these nice cutthroats,” Dungan said.

No longer a poor college student, he entertained ideas of making and selling a device that would give ice fishers the ability to set hooks without hovering over their holes. He called it the JawJacker.

“I thought it was kind of a catchy name,” he said. “A little different. It sets the hook in their mouth and kind of jacks their jaw.”

The device would go on to sell thousands each year and eventually make more money than his nursing profession.

“I just started tinkering,” he said. “I’d always built traps and stuff. I had a drill press and table saw, and I made some prototypes.”

Hook-setting devices have been around since the 1800s, but they were often huge and cumbersome, ill-suited for ice fishing.

“I wanted to make this thing light and compact,” he said. “When you go ice fishing there is a lot of stuff you have to take on the ice. You don’t want something big and cumbersome.”

After coming up with his design, an engineer neighbor who had CAD software helped him draw up designs. He obtained a patent on his trigger mechanism in 2007. Then he found a manufacturer in Texas who could create plastic injection molds and build and box the final product in his China plant.

But before the JawJacker could become reality, Dungan needed money.

“It cost me quite a bit of money,” he said. “I basically took a second mortgage out on my house. I had $50,000. It was enough money to buy the injection molds that I needed.”

The first year he made 1,000 JawJackers and sold about half online and the rest at Sportsman’s Warehouse. Each year afterward his business grew with new connections with Bass Pro Shops and other outdoors stores and word of mouth. The JawJacker retails for $45.

“That’s actually advertising, when you get into the bigger stores. It kind of validates you as a good product and not just a gimmick,” he said.

Ice fisherman Chris Dougan of Idaho Falls, who admits to having thousands of dollars worth of gear, says he uses the JawJacker.

“The JawJacker is definitely worth the money,” Dougan said. “What happens when those fish hit, it’s such a light hit sometimes you don’t even realize you got a hit. If you have four or five poles out, and you’re watching the one that you’re jigging, the JawJacker comes in super handy. When you’re in the tent you hear the JawJacker go ‘bing’ and you’re good.”

Dungan’s latest product hitting the market this past ice fishing season is called the Jigging JawJacker. The JawJacker attaches to a motorized base that raises and lowers the rod, line and jig automatically to attract fish.

“I sold it for the first time last year,” he said of the Jigging JawJacker. “It’s done pretty good. I sold everything I had last year. I had about 5,000 and sold them all.”

He also sells a selection of jigs and ice fishing rods on his website. The jigs are made for him by “a guy in Minnesota” and the graphite rods are made for him in China. His marketing strategy has been to post YouTube videos online to demonstrate the JawJacker. His video helpers have been family and relatives.

“People learn I’m a one-man show and it encourages them to buy it to support me rather than their money going to some big company,” he said. “I do a lot with my father-in-law at Fort Peck (Montana) Reservoir. Those are my kids and brother-in-laws and their kids on the videos.”

Samples of his videos can be found at jawjackerfishing.com.

With the success of his business, he’s been feeling the pressure of perhaps giving up nursing and going full-time with his JawJacker. He’s had orders from as far away as Russia and Sweden.

“It’s getting to the point where it’s hard to manage both,” he said. “I’d rather put my time into the JawJacker.”

The inspiration for a 1,200-mile bikepacking trip around the Greater Yellowstone area came from staring at a shaded relief map hanging above Don Carpenter’s desk at work.

“I’ve done a few shorter rides of this nature, and this map kept grabbing my attention,” said Carpenter, who lives in Victor and works in Jackson, Wyoming, for the American Avalanche Institute. “I kept trying to figure out if we could make a ride out of it. Out the door and back in the door — create a loop.”

Carpenter recruited his friend Gary Chrisman, also of Victor, and the pair rode from their homes clockwise around the region and back to Victor during the last two weeks of July.

“It was incredible,” Chrisman said. “Oh my gosh, the wildlife, the farmland, the beautiful mountain views.”

Carpenter and Chrisman planned their ride to be on dirt as much as possible.

Their set up was to carry lightweight gear and camp out.

“We didn’t stay in any motels, so other than feeding yourself, there aren’t any real expenses,” Chrisman said. “It adds up, but as vacations go, you’re not spending a big amount of money.”

Carpenter said one of the highlights of the trip was interacting with people along the way. Both he and Chrisman mentioned an older man who stopped to tell family stories while they were riding through remote, desolate country south of Thermopolis, Wyo.

“We ended up spending about an hour having an amazing conversation with this guy,” Carpenter said. “He was excited to share the stories of what it was like to grow up in that country. We were literally hearing stories of his family several generations going back of telling us where Jim Bridger came through that area and stories of Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall Gang who came through that terrain to get away from the law. It was just so neat. People describe it as a wasteland or something like that, but it’s not. … It was a real highlight of the trip for sure.”

Both men said riding a bike around the Greater Yellowstone opened up more interaction with people and was a good pace to see the country.

“It’s the perfect speed because walking something like that would take a long time,” Chrisman said. “Driving it (in a car) you wouldn’t notice the nuances of the terrain, you wouldn’t see some of these very small creeks and drainages and feel the contours and watch where people put their homes. We saw more antelope than you can shake a stick at. And all the deer in the fields, bear scat. It’s the perfect pace to experience the topography, the temperatures, the resources that are available.”

In an age where many bikepackers have turned trips into races, Carpenter and Chrisman called this trip their “soulful cycling challenge” — not a race, but also more mileage and riding that a typical tour bike trip. Chrisman said their shortest day was about 70 miles of riding “with lots of elevation gain” and the longest more than 100 miles.

Carpenter said planning the route was challenging because of the mosaic of public and private land around the outskirts of the region.

“Our goal was to stay on less-traveled and remote terrain, and that meant dirt roads and some trails,” Carpenter said. “We hit paved roads where there just wasn’t another option. It required some study of maps and phone calls to different land management agencies. There was one section where we got permission to cross over some private land to avoid going onto a major highway.”

The pair found that much of their ride was along the transition area between alpine and desert ecosystems.

“Something that Don and I really noticed was this interface of where water coming out of all these higher mountains into these lower-lying areas, particularly on the east side is really what creates life,” Chrisman said. “As soon as the slopes aren’t too steep, you have people and ranches and farms that are setting up life. That’s kind of where the ecosystem really meets civilization or a version of it.”

East Idaho biologists want wolverines to shed a bit of hair and grin for the camera in the name of science.

Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologists in the Upper Snake River Region recently began placing 10 camera traps in the Island Park area and two elsewhere, along with scent dispensers designed to attract wolverines passing through. The main idea is to see how many of the elusive creatures frequent the region.

“They have a really wide range,” said James Brower, regional communications manager for Fish and Game. Brower helped install one of the Island Park traps. “The bottom line is that we don’t know (how many wolverines there are). That’s what this whole study is about.”

Brower said if wolverines are found in the area, the next step would be to capture and collar them to get a better idea of the animal’s distribution.

Besides taking photos, the tree-hung bait traps also have copper bristles attached below the scent traps to catch hair samples.

“So if an animal crawls up and down it snags a little bit of hair off of it,” Brower said. “Potentially we can get some DNA from that if we can get enough hair samples. We can see if they are different individuals or if they are related. It goes into a database that gives us tons of information.”

The scent used in the traps is a mixture of skunk essence, beaver castor and anise, and “some other really good smelly stuff,” he said.

The odor is dripped out of a mechanical, battery-operated dispenser intended to run all winter long.

“In the trapping world, anything that smells funky attracts all sorts of critters,” Brower said. “We have found cases where deer and elk will come to check them out. Everything that loves to eat meat will come to investigate what the heck went on over there.”

Wolverines are the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family with males weighing up to 50 pounds and females, 26 pounds. The critter lives in high mountain regions close to the tree line where snow cover persists well into May or even June. Wolverines prefer to den in the snow.

Recent estimates peg wolverine numbers in the lower 48 states at 250 to 300. Canada is believed to have 15,000 to 20,000.

“The wolverine is basically a relic of the ice age, and it still persists where ice-age conditions persist,” said Tim Preso on his Earthjustice website. He’s an attorney for Earthjustice, which supports federal protections for wolverines. “Wolverines are extremely tough and they live in extremely harsh environments at high elevation. Mostly they’re up on those high ridges and they’re up there year-round. So when grizzly bears, which we think of as a tough animal, are sleeping in their hibernation dens for the winter, the wolverine is still out there on those snow-blasted slopes trying to eke out a living.”

One thing wolverines are renowned for is their giant home territory.

“They are heavily snow-dependent for their breeding success,” Brower said. “They have to have a whole lot of snow. They are built for wintertime. They’ve got huge pads on their feet that will allow them to really move on top of the snow. They are movers and shakers. They never stop. They are just hauling all the time. They have really wide home ranges.”

Some estimates put wolverine home ranges at 160 square miles.

Brower said Fish and Game plans to continue the study into to future.

“We may also see other critters (in the camera traps) as well,” he said. “It’s always useful information.”

On Jan. 25, four snowmobilers were riding some of the Snake River Range’s most challenging terrain northeast of Palisades Reservoir.

Recent storms had caused the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center to post the avalanche danger at “considerable.”

Three of the four riders waited at the bottom of a slope while Tommy Hawkins, of Layton, Utah (formerly of Victor), made his second attempt to climb a slope and obtain a ridge with his turbo-charged machine.

The slope failed and a large avalanche roared down, swallowing Hawkins and sliding into the other three riders. Hawkins vanished, two others were buried to their waists, and a fourth was completely buried except for one hand. The three managed to dig themselves out and hunt for Hawkins using his beacon’s signal.

As they neared the beacon’s signal, the searchers could hear Hawkins’ running snowmobile beneath the surface of the slide. They dug down and found him buried headfirst, unconscious, his head six feet below the surface. His avalanche airbag was deployed and his helmet was packed with snow. CPR was administered but Hawkins died of asphyxiation.

“The bottom line is: Never underestimate the avalanche problem,” said Lynne Wolfe, an avalanche educator and editor of a small technical paper in Jackson, Wyoming, called the Avalanche Review. “Choose terrain to match the conditions and leave yourself a good margin. If you’re not sure what’s above you then stay well out of the way.”

Wolfe, who teaches avalanche awareness courses for Exum Mountain Guides, will be one of the speakers at the Avalanche Awareness Night scheduled for 7 p.m. Dec. 7 at Taylorview Middle School in Idaho Falls. She will be joined by Sarah Carpenter co-owner of the American Avalanche Institute headquartered in Jackson.

The annual Avalanche Awareness Night is organized by Lani and Wray Landon, who lost their son to an avalanche 11 seasons ago. Besides top-drawer instruction, the free program will also feature several door prizes.

With backcountry skiing, snowboarding and snowmobiling popularity at an all-time high, several groups are preaching how to be safe. Last month, an avalanche awareness course aimed at snowmobilers attracted about 100 people at Rexburg Motorsports.

“A lot of people, and for good reason, won’t ride with people who haven’t taken a class,” said Matt Dyer, a manager at Rexburg Motorsports. “I want to make sure I’m riding with guys who know how to use (avalanche gear) and how to find me. If you take the wrong person who is not trained … they can become a liability.”

Summer Andersen started the Adam Andersen Avalanche Project in the winter of 2018 after her husband died in an avalanche while snowmobiling near Mount Jefferson in the Island Park region. She said the project’s main fundraising comes from an awareness night held at Action Motor Sports in Idaho Falls each fall. The project has a few goals to post signs on potential danger and offer free avalanche packs that snowmobilers can check out. With the help of others, she posted 10 signs this fall in the Palisades area at popular snowmobile entry points. Last year, she posted five signs in the Island Park area.

“I’ve been able to get about six avalanche packs for people to use for free in Island Park and Idaho Falls,” Andersen said. “This year I’m going to try to offer scholarships for people to take their avy courses. The whole idea is to promote awareness and education and make sure people know what they’re doing when they go out in the backcountry.”

Anderson said she is also pushing to get improved forecasting for areas such as Island Park which has been left out of conditions reports in the past. The Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center currently posts conditions on the Centennial Range.

“It’s kind of in a dead spot,” she said. “Where Adam died is technically in the Centennials. Before he died there was no forecasting for that area. Almost a year later they opened up forecasting for the Centennials. Even now they don’t get all of it.”

Carpenter said the Avalanche Awareness Night will look at the current snowpack and how it formed, review better tools for communicating within a group, as well as communicating after something happens.

“We will present information on snowpack, weather trends and decision making,” Carpenter said. “We will also introduce or review the fundamentals of how to recognize avalanche terrain.”

Wolfe said she hopes to educate through entertaining stories.

“I spend a lot of time thinking about, researching, printing, things that have to do with decision making and human factors,” Wolfe said. “I really think that the bottom line is people think they can get away with it. This won’t happen to me. The minute you start acknowledging how this can happen to me, it happened to my neighbor, it happened in this spot, then we’d be a little bit more conservative in the places where we need to be.”

In Wyoming, a state where snowmobile avalanche deaths now outnumber all other avalanche victims, Wolfe said out-of-staters are often caught unaware.

“The locals seemed to be pretty well educated,” she said. “The visitors, at least on Togwotee (Pass), who come in from Wisconsin for a week don’t really understand the extent of the problem. It’s much more than gear. It’s understanding how to recognize good conditions and bad conditions and how to tailor your behavior appropriately.”

Carpenter said this season’s snowpack is already looking a bit suspect in the region’s mountains with areas of weak, sugary snow.

“When we finally get more snow, the set up will be like trying to build a house on a foundation of sand,” she said. “We are going to be keeping our eyes out for this weak early season snow.”

The experts said the Avalanche Awareness Night is not meant to replace hands-on courses that teach in the field. Instructors recommend learning the basics, such as using a beacon, using a probe, digging snow pits, and reading and recognizing dangerous situations.

One tool easily available to backcountry users is online avalanche forecasts. Sites such as the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center and Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center provide daily forecasts and conditions during the winter season.

Like hoisting an oversized stretcher, four strong men heaved the poles out of the giant bathtub sitting in a pickup bed, water poured from the stretcher sides, and huge fins thrashed.

They were carrying a monster, more than 7-feet long. The truck was backed up at the boat launch just below John’s Hole Bridge in Idaho Falls on a recent afternoon.

“This is where we need the weightlifters,” said Dan Anta, assistant manager at the Hagerman fish hatchery.

The men carried the creature down the boat ramp to the water.

“What is it?” asked a small boy, who was watching the proceedings.

“It’s a dinosaur,” teased James Brower, regional communications manager for Idaho Department of Fish and Game. He paused while the men released the behemoth into the water, then he told the truth: “It’s a sturgeon.”

“Can I touch him?” Conor Kennedy, 6, asked.

“Yes, but hurry,” said his father, Patrick Kennedy, a Fish and Game regional fisheries biologist who was standing in shin-deep water, steadying the fish. Mid-torso the fish was as thick as a watermelon. A giddy Conor stepped into the water and petted the fish’s head like it was a puppy.

After a few minutes the sturgeon slowly patrolled the water about the boat dock and then disappeared into the depths of the Snake River. The process was repeated again with a second 7-foot-long sturgeon. This fish circled about in the boat launch area for a minute, then vanished into the dark river water.

The two fish were 25 years old and were removed from the observation pond at Fish and Game’s Hagerman Hatchery northwest of Twin Falls.

“They lived their entire life in their show pond that showcases some big fish,” Kennedy said. “They had fairly high densities and they were looking to reduce their densities in their observation tank.”

On Tuesday, Fish and Game planted eight, 4-foot sturgeon below Gem Lake on the Snake River. At that age, the sturgeon were only a few years old. While 4-foot-long fish may sound big, for sturgeon they’re just youngsters. Kennedy said sturgeon don’t reach adulthood until about age 20 and can live in excess of 100 years old.

Sturgeon are the largest freshwater fish in North America. Before the era of dams on the Snake, Salmon and Columbia rivers, sturgeon grew to 1,500 pounds feasting on abundant runs of salmon, steelhead, lamprey and mussels. Dams now often isolate sturgeon populations and have reduced some of their food sources.

The fish’s long life and slow maturity is one reason why they are catch-and-release only — never removing them from the water — throughout the state. Barbless hooks with a sliding sinker are also required. For tips and rules on Idaho sturgeon fishing, go to idfg.idaho.gov/old-web/docs/fish/sturgeonFishingTips.pdf.

Fish and Game started planting white sturgeon in the Snake River at Idaho Falls in 2007. The river has been stocked the past few springs with about 200 little guys in the 2-foot range. The fish are stocked in five locations — the upper being at the Idaho Falls Dog Park and the lower being below Gem Lake.

Sturgeon tend to be bottom feeders. Brower said some anglers in Idaho Falls are targeting the sturgeon and have been catching them “on a regular basis.”

“Most of them are in the 2- to 3-foot range, they’re not huge, but that’s still a big fish,” Brower said.

Two weeks ago a popular hermit’s cabin deep in the wilderness along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River got a major makeover.

The tiny cabin, built by Earl King Parrott about 100 years ago, was falling apart and needed some TLC. The Salmon-Challis National Forest called on the expertise of Joe Gallagher, a professional historic site restorer, now retired, archaeologist Camille Sayer and a few river guides to help with the work.

The lower Parrott cabin sits at the confluence of Nugget Creek and the Middle Fork Salmon River within the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. The site is a regular stop off by river rafters floating the Middle Fork, where guides recount the story of “The Hermit of Impassable Canyon.”

Parrott spent 30 years living a solitary existence in the Middle Fork country panning for gold, hunting, trapping and growing his own fruits and vegetables. He died in 1944 and is buried in the Salmon cemetery.

“He would go down to the river and try to pan for gold — that flour gold,” Gallagher said. “It’s back-breaking work. When he would gather maybe $50 or $60 worth he would go up to the town of Shoup and buy whatever he needed there, which might be salt, tobacco or bullets or whatever a hermit needs.”

Johnny Carey and Cort Conley, in their historical book entitled “The Middle Fork and the Sheepeater War,” describe Parrott as “intelligent and industrious,” but also “stubborn, aloof and lacking in humor.”

Parrott’s main residence was about 1,000 feet up the side of the steep canyon, but was difficult to get to. He had a series of ladders and ropes to climb the canyon. The main cabin burned down during a forest fire in the late 1980s, according to the Forest Service. The lower cabin near the river is all that is left tied to the wilderness hermit.

“The Central Idaho Wilderness Act of 1980 specifically requires identification and management of cultural resources including historic cabins in wilderness,” said Amy Baumer, public affairs officer for the Salmon-Challis National Forest. “The cabin was identified in the Historic Preservation Plan for the wilderness as a good candidate for preservation.”

Baumer said because the cabin is in the wilderness, non-mechanized traditional tools such as handsaws, axes, hammers and chisels were used to refurbish the cabin.

Getting to the site was an adventure.

First, Gallagher and Sayer flew to a backcountry airstrip, then floated down the Middle Fork with three others for a day before arriving at the site. A previous Forest Service rafting crew delivered replacement logs and 30-inch shakes to rebuild the cabin roof.

Next, Gallagher and Sayer used intuition and research to put things back together.

“What we had were a few (historic) photos of this building from just after Earl passed away,” Gallagher said. “We didn’t have a good picture of the roof but we did have pretty good pictures of two of the walls. We used those to guide us.”

The crew took the cabin apart (labeling pieces to put it back together precisely), rebuilt the foundation with river rock and put it back together. Badly deteriorated logs were replaced. Wood was treated with products to help preserve it and prevent rot and mold. The cabin floor was simple dirt.

“We did a few things to bullet-proof the building,” Gallagher said. “Will it last another 20 years? Yeah.”

Gallagher, 71, was originally hired decades ago by the Forest Service as an archaeologist and was told he also had responsibility for historic as well as prehistoric stuff.

“I was able to work with somebody in an apprentice capacity for five or six years,” he said. “When I started, I didn’t know which end of the hammer to hold and when I was done I went out on my own.”

He retired from the Forest Service and worked as a general contractor with his company Heritage Preservation Resources Inc., refurbishing historic sites for about 10 years.

“I’ve probably done hundreds and hundreds of buildings,” he said, “everything from taking them apart and putting them back together again to just assessing their condition, things from small cabins to whole forts.”

Gallagher said his business now does the work on a volunteer basis because at his age “I no longer need to chase after money.”

Gallagher said the Frank Church Wilderness is loaded with historic sites that need help.

Forest Service archaeologist Tim Canaday said “without a willing cadre of volunteers, preservation projects such as this are nearly impossible to accomplish.”

The Forest Service plans to create an interpretive brochure describing the history of the cabin and the preservation activities surrounding it for wilderness visitors.