Wilderness Areas links in Montana

The Anaconda-Pintler wilderness straddles the Continental Divide in the Anaconda mountain range, encompassing high and rugged peaks, cirques, U-shaped valleys, and glacial moraines. Sparkling lakes and tumbling streams fed by icy waters enhance the beauty and offer fishing for several species of fish.

Here is one of the most completely preserved mountain ecosystems in the world, the kind of wilderness most people can only imagine: rugged peaks, alpine lakes, cascading waterfalls, grassy meadows embellished with shimmering streams, a towering coniferous forest, and big river valleys.

The Cabinet Mountains Wilderness is located in northwestern Montana approximately 15 miles southwest of Libby, Mt. This area contains some of the most beautiful sub-alpine scenery in western Montana. It includes more than 20 hiking trails, 85 small lakes, ridgetop panoramas, and alpine meadows.  Photo: Steve Boutcher

Meriwether Lewis was the first to leave a record of his passage "from the singular appearance of this place I called it the gates of the mountains."  The Gates of the Mountains, as it is known today, is one of the most widely recognized landmarks of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Photo: Steve Boutcher

The Great Bear Wilderness is located in northern Montana just south of Glacier National Park and northwest of the Bob Marshall Wilderness in the Flathead National Forest. The Wilderness contains more than 300 miles of trails, and about 50 miles of the Wild and Scenic Upper Middle Fork of the Flathead River runs through it.

Two sections of Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge are designated together as Montana's smallest Wilderness

Here is a land of ragged peaks with snow on them most of the year, small active glaciers, alpine lakes, meadows, clear streams that run icy cold, slablike boulders, vertical cliff faces, and talus slopes.

The southern boundary of the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area and Wilderness (RNRAW) is just four miles north of Missoula, Montana.

Of the refuge's total of about 43,500 acres, roughly three-fourths has been designated Wilderness, including the major bodies of water and surrounding marsh and grassland.

Together, the Great Bear Wilderness, the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Scapegoat Wilderness form the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, an area of more than 1.5 million acres.

Selway-Bitterroot is the third largest Wilderness in the Lower 48, surpassed in size only by California's Death Valley Wilderness and Idaho's Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (RONR).

UL Bend Wilderness, which is a part of the UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge that is in turn swallowed by the vast Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMRNWR).

The Welcome Creek Wilderness lies in the Rock Creek drainage about 25 miles east of Missoula, Montana.