Talk:List of mountain ranges in Idaho

White Cloud Mountains

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 While no one refers to the range by this name, some of the few credible sources, including the outdated GNIS and USGS topo maps continue to refer to the White Clouds and "peaks."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)

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)