Talk:List of mountain ranges in Idaho

This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

United States: Idaho Mid‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	Idaho portal This article is supported by WikiProject Idaho (assessed as High-importance).

Mountains Mid‑importance

	Mountains portal This article is part of WikiProject Mountains, a project to systematically present information on mountains. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page (see Contributing FAQ for more information), or visit the project page where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.MountainsWikipedia:WikiProject MountainsTemplate:WikiProject MountainsMountain articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Geography Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Geography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of geography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GeographyWikipedia:WikiProject GeographyTemplate:WikiProject Geographygeography articles

Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Geography To-do list:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : See Requested articles/Social sciences/Geography, cities, regions and named places and Missing articles about Locations
Assess : Tag related article talk pages with {{WikiProject Geography}}. To help assess the quality and importance of geography articles, please see: Unassessed geography articles and Unknown-importance geography articles.
Cleanup : See Geography articles needing attention
Deletion sorting : Listed at Geographic related deletion discussions
Geographical coordinates : See Articles missing geocoordinate data by country
Infobox : See Geography articles needing infoboxes
Map : See Wikipedia requested maps
Notability : See Geography articles with topics of unclear notability
Photo : See Wikipedia requested photographs of places
Stubs : See Geography stubs

Lists Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Lists, an attempt to structure and organize all list pages on Wikipedia. If you wish to help, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.ListsWikipedia:WikiProject ListsTemplate:WikiProject ListsList articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

White Cloud Mountains[edit]

This list is heavily biased towards ranges named by GNIS and leaves gaping holes in Idaho where there are obviously mountain ranges (try also looking at the Google Map of coordinates from this article and you will see a massive gap in central Idaho, which is the most mountainous part of the state, obviously leaving out several mountain ranges, try also Salmon River Mountains). My attempts to list the White Cloud Mountains on this list have been unsuccessful because of this bias. Anyone familiar with central Idaho will know of the White Cloud Mountains, a mountain range that played significant role in the creation of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. Some sources cite the range as the "White Cloud Peaks," obviously to some degree of confusion. While no one refers to the range by this name, some of the few credible sources, including the outdated GNIS and USGS topo maps continue to refer to the White Clouds and "peaks."

As an illustration of this, see the GNIS entry "White Cloud Peaks" (GNIS ID number 393324). GNIS lists the class of this feature as as summit, because something listed as a "peak" would obviously be a summit to someone entering data. Yet the coordinates given by GNIS refer to an unnamed peak as shown by both the USGS Washington Peak topo map and the official USFS Sawtooth National Forest Map, not to mention Google Maps and others. Some of the peaks in the White Cloud Mountains are referred to by climbers as White Cloud Peak (WCP) #X, albeit unofficially, but even still, these coordinates do not refer to any specific informal peak, just "Peak 10857", something nearly insignificant by White Cloud standards. Thus, it appears that GNIS incorrectly entered this data back on 21 June 1979 and confused a mountain range ("peaks") for a summit!

This article itself admits that this list in incomplete by stating that "There are at least 114 mountain ranges in Idaho." As such, it will always be incomplete as long as it relies entirely upon GNIS. For further references see those I have listed under Sawtooth National Forest. This is one of Idaho's most majestic mountain ranges, and its omission from this list is a terrible mistake.Fredlyfish4 (talk) 03:45, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I contacted GNIS earlier this year about this issue, and they have since corrected the mistake so what was a "peak" is now a "range." I think this article would be better if it was made into a table format because the current format can be difficult to read. Also, rather than including the almost meaningless elevation that GNIS provides, what about changing it to include the range's highest point and it's elevation? I think that would be much more informative. Any thoughts? Fredlyfish4 (talk) 16:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]