Yes, it is spelled that way.
Between the Pacific Ocean and Fish Creek are 500 miles of open water. Steelhead may swim that length four times (or more) throughout their life.
It’s an important journey for them. The ocean, while full of food, isn’t a safe place to grow up. Instead, steelhead, chinook salmon, and Pacific lamprey make their way deep inland, through the Cascades, Columbia Plateau, and into the Clearwater Mountains to spawn.
The 118,000-acre Fish-Hungery Roadless Area (called the North Lochsa Slope by the Forest Service) is named for the Fish Creek watershed and it's tributary Hungery Creek. Hungery was named (and poorly spelled) by Lewis and Clark, who had turned to eating their horses in the fall of 1805 as they descended the Lolo Trail toward the Nimiipuu village of Weippe.
The region is largely the same as when Lewis and Clark saw it more than 200 years ago. The northern boundary is the Lolo Motorway, a high clearance road that closely follows a traditional Nez Perce trail and divides the Fish-Hungery area from the Weitas creek watershed. The southern boundary is US Highway 12, which follows the Wild and Scenic Lochsa River.
In recent years, calls to breach the Lower Snake River Dams have intensified, largely for the sake of anadromous (ocean-going) freshwater fish.
But even if those dams are removed, fish need quality habitat to travel to. Fish-Hungery Creek is a habitat worth protecting for them.
Fish-Hungery Creek is located 70 miles east of Lewiston, Idaho. It is bounded by the Lolo Motorway to the north, highway 12 to the south, and developed areas of the Clearwater National Forest to the east and West. It is part of the Clearwater Wildlands Complex, nestled between Weitas Creek, Rackliff-Gedney, and Lochsa Face Roadless Areas and the Selway-Bitteroot Wilderness Area,
Geology
This area is part of the Idaho Batholith, a vast complex of granitic rocks that vary in age from roughly 50 to 70 million years old. These granites and diorites sometimes have basalt dikes which leave long dark stripes in otherwise pale grey-pink stone.
The batholith is known for its fragility—freeze-thaw action, intense weather events, and roadbuilding cause landslides throughout the area on occasion.
Ecology
This country is characterized by two major types of drainages. One type of drainage involves a series of one- to six-mile long streams like Glade, Apgar, Deadman, and Bimerick Creeks that drain directly into the Lochsa River. The southwestern and northeastern portions of these creeks are distinguished by steep stream breaklands dissected by abrupt side drainages.
The second type of drainage, represented by the central portions of the Upper Bimerick and Fish Creek areas, exhibits a more broken topography: moderate-relief uplands and gentle hills etched with meandering streams that spill into broad, diversely vegetated bottomlands. Here, in the 60,000-acre Fish Creek drainage, the explorer is blessed with a sense of solitude and isolation from other human activity along the most important steelhead stream in Idaho. Lush, shaded banks create a vital haven for anadromous steelhead trout and Chinook summer salmon, as well as cutthroat and rainbow trout.
Elk enjoy essential summer range in the Fish Creek drainage, and the area as a whole contains nearly 18,000 acres of ungulate winter range. Mule and white-tailed deer, moose, mountain goats, cougars, black bears, fishers, pine martens, wolverines, and lynx are among the mammal denizens, and Region 1 sensitive bird and amphibian species are also present.
Elevations in the Fish-Hungery Creek area range from about 1,600 feet near the Lochsa River to over 6,500 feet atop Castle Butte to the northeast. At higher elevations, lodgepole pine, subalpine fir, and beargrass are common. Western red cedar and grand fir grace the north-facing slopes. Extensive forest fires in the early 1900s largely determined later growth. A mosaic of expansive brush fields covers many of the slopes, especially those in the southern and western portions of the area; these fields then give way to areas dense with western white pine, Douglas-fir, Engelmann spruce, larch, ponderosa pine, and mountain hemlock.
The Fish-Hungery Creek area also boasts several sensitive plant species including clustered ladyslipper, evergreen kittentail, Constance’s bittercress, broad-fruit mariposa, light hookeria, and banks monkeyflower. The 1,300-acre Lochsa Research Natural Area was established in 1977 to protect and study the unique Pacific Coast vegetation that occurs within the roadless area boundaries. Flowering dogwood and 14 other plant species not normally found east of the Cascade Mountains grow in this Research Natural Area.
An approximately quarter-mile-wide corridor along the Wild & Scenic Middle Fork/Lochsa River runs along the full length of the roadless area north of Highway 12. This 4,500-acre corridor is specially managed to emphasize the scenic values of the river's environs. A sparse network of minimally maintained trails weaves throughout the area, most constructed by the Forest Service for wildfire control access in the early 20th century. One path runs parallel to Fish Creek, offering low-impact accessibility to its cool, alluring waters.
Stream fishing, hiking, backpacking, and horseback riding are becoming more popular here; visitors can disperse widely throughout this country, from the mossy stream beds to the steep breaklands with panoramic vistas of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.
The Lolo Trail is an important prehistoric route and plays a prominent role in Nez Perce culture and history. This area contains the longest remaining undisturbed section of the Lewis & Clark Trail in the country, a stretch of approximately 17 miles through the Hungery Creek drainage area.
A World War II Japanese Internment camp near Highway 12 just outside the southern boundary is one of several other noteworthy historic and prehistoric sites in or near this roadless area.
The Fish-Hungery Creek area was separated from Weitas Creek in the 1930s when the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed the Lolo Motorway. This was the primary road between Lewiston, Idaho and Missoula, Montana for decades, before the completion of US Highway 12 over Lolo Pass in 1962.
This area provides critical habitat for steelhead and became even more important after the construction of dams on the Lower Snake and North Fork Clearwater Rivers in the mid-20th century.
The Fish-Hungery Creek Roadless Area was formally identified during the RARE (Roadless Area Review and Evaluation) process during planning for the US National Forest Service's 2001 Roadless Rule. Unfortunately, the area is currently governed under the Idaho Roadless Rule, a weak piece of regulation that offers little protection from roadbuilding, logging, or other development.
Under the Clearwater National Forest Travel Plan (2012), much of the area is now open to motorcycles and ATVs and the associated disruption of natural processes and intact ecosystems. Areas to the west and east of the Fish-Hungery Creek Roadless Area have already been developed for timber harvesting. The wealth and diversity of the region’s flora and fauna cannot afford encroachment of roads and further exploitation. Its wilderness attributes and location make it an ideal wilderness candidate. However, it is not recommended in the 2025 Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests Plan.
