Boundary County Water Access

Guest blog from Accesstooutdoors.org

On Friday 3/15/2015, Michelle Porter and I (Miles Moore) visited all the main access points of the bodies of water in Boundary County area that are nearest Bonners Ferry. This was for the purpose of identifying degree of accessibility of various water sites and their potential to be made accessible.

Areas we visited… We visited the Kootenai River, Moyie River/Reservoir, and the following lakes: Smith, Bonner, Brush, Dawson, MacArthur, Perkins, and Smith. Dawson and MacArthur Lakes are the most accessible of these to persons with disAbilities, and are both fairly close to Bonners Ferry.

All this needs is some back fill to the edge

On the Kootenai River the launch next to the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge is most ideal for development of an accessible marine site, in part because of it’s fairly level terrain; currently it is almost totally inaccessible to persons using wheelchairs.

Moyie Reservoir off of HWY 2 is another ideal area for development due to it’s location and other features. Currently it is not accessible to persons using wheelchairs.

All other facilities we visited are either totally in-accessible or only partially accessible to persons with disAbilities utilizing wheelchairs. However I must say Perkins Lake has a nice accessible long fishing dock, but their launch is all mud.

Strong and fast moving currents can be an issue on the Kootenai River and Moyie River/Reservoir so these sites are more use-able after late spring or early summer (depending on spring run off). Still, once this time is past there are quite a few months

Narrowest door ever on this outhouse

in which they can be safely enjoyed.

If you live in Boundary County we would love to hear from you related to your ideas and input in helping develop more accessible water based facilities. Thank you in advance for your input!

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