Snake & Hoback Rivers — Wild & Scenic

Two rivers, one Wild & Scenic system

The Headwaters

The Snake River begins in the high country of the Bridger-Teton, gathering from the Teton and Gros Ventre ranges. The Hoback runs in from the southeast and joins it at the confluence. Together they drain one of the wildest river systems in the Lower 48.

Wild & Scenic

In 2009 the Craig Thomas Snake Headwaters Legacy Act gave 413.5 miles of the Snake and its tributaries — the Hoback among them — federal Wild & Scenic protection. The designation guards their free-flowing character, water quality, and the values that make each segment outstanding.

The River Today

Anglers, floaters, outfitters, and a Forest Service that has to manage all of it. Access points, rapids, flows, and safety — the working river a Wild & Scenic coordinator keeps watch over every season. The interactive map turns that whole picture into a tool you can actually use.

What the map does

Live conditions

Real-time USGS flow, stage, and water temp at four gauges, with 7-day history.

Float planning

Two-river put-in/take-out routing, including the Hoback-to-Snake cross-river run at the confluence.

Rapids schematics

Canvas diagrams of Lunch Counter, Big Kahuna, Champagne, and Rope, with flow-dependent run notes.

Species guide

Five fish and thirteen wildlife species with Wyoming Game & Fish regulations and safety notes.

Flow alerts

Email subscriptions that fire when a gauge crosses a chosen threshold.

Access & safety

275 mapped placemarks: access points, campgrounds, bridges, AEDs, and emergency response.

Open the interactive map →

Seeing the rivers in 360°

Immersive 360° capture of the Snake and the Hoback is Phase 1 work. While that field season is being scheduled, here is the same crew and the same equipment already working Wyoming water — the North Platte at Alcova, Keyhole Reservoir, and Devils Tower — plus the nearest regional river corridors in Montana. Same state, same pipeline, same deliverable.

Alcova Reservoir

North Platte River, WY — 26.5 mi · Dramatic red canyon walls at 1,676 m elevation on the North Platte drainage

Open on terrain360.com

North Platte River corridor near Alcova and Casper, Wyoming

North Platte River — Casper

Casper, WY — 13.0 mi river corridor · USGS-gauged stretch of the North Platte through the Casper reach

Open on terrain360.com

Keyhole State Park

Keyhole Reservoir, WY — 1.8 mi · Reservoir shoreline trail through Wyoming high plains at 4,090 ft

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Devils Tower National Monument

Crook County, WY — 1.4 mi loop · Paved base trail circumnavigating the 1,298 m basalt monolith

Open on terrain360.com

Camp Fortunate Overlook

Beaverhead Mts., MT — ~0.1 mi access · High-alpine divide where Lewis & Clark met the Shoshone, overlooking the Snake drainage

Open on terrain360.com

Gates of the Mountains

Missouri River, MT — 49 mi captured · 1,200 ft limestone walls where Lewis said the river appeared to enter the mountains

Open on terrain360.com

Four of these six captures are in Wyoming — Alcova Reservoir and the North Platte corridor to the south, Keyhole Reservoir and Devils Tower to the northeast. The same Terrain360 crew, camera system, and processing pipeline that worked those Wyoming sites is the team queued for the Snake and the Hoback. When Phase 1 field work runs, the output will slot directly into this map at the same resolution and coverage density you see here.

Today, and after you commit

Today

A concept preview for the Bridger-Teton Wild & Scenic program

This site is a pitch artifact built for the Snake and Hoback Wild & Scenic coordinator to show what a proper river-management tool looks like before any partnership is formal. It carries a "Concept preview" badge and is currently set noindex, so it does not appear in search engines — which is exactly why you landed here by a direct link rather than a Google result. The pitch framing you see is the reason a river map currently leads with program rationale instead of conditions.

After commit

The same domain flips into an operational river-info site

Once a partnership is in place, paddlejacksonhole.com flips into the working Snake Headwaters river-info site — access, conditions, and safety content moves front and center, the pitch framing fades out, the "Concept preview" badge comes down, and search engines come back. The people who actually use it every season: floaters running Lunch Counter at 6,000 cfs, anglers checking cutthroat regs before they launch, and the Forest Service staff who manage the river corridor.

Land acknowledgment

The Snake River headwaters rise in lands stewarded by the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho peoples of the Wind River Reservation long before the Wild & Scenic designation gave that stewardship a federal name. The Hoback, the Gros Ventre, and the high country above them carry that history forward. Terrain360 welcomes collaboration with tribal nations on how this river and its watershed are represented in this tool.