
Most Remote Spots in USA Wilderness Complexes - johnny313
http://www.peakbagger.com/report/report.aspx?r=w
======
thaumaturgy
I've been in at least a couple of the places in that list, and probably about
as far from civilization as possible in those areas. I'm willing to believe
their numbers are technically correct.

But I bet cityfolk have a reeeeeeaally different notion of "road" than is
meant here.

Take the Trinity Alps complex for example. It's got, still to this day, my
least favorite approach ever. You go way up the north coast, then along 299
(if I remember right), then through a reservation, and then you get on this
lovely little road that's several miles of 15-mile-an-hour white-knuckle less-
than-single-lane rough gravel, with steep granite on one side and a drop
straight down to a river on t'other, and a whole lot of blind corners. You do
that for a while, then you see the yellow sign posted that says, "Road
Narrows", and whaddaya know, it sure as heck does.

It's a road that started as a trail and never really had any ambitions beyond
that.

There are a ton of logging roads and fire cuts all over the place too. Lots of
dusty hill climbs. Other rarely-trafficked routes where the macho advertising
for your 4WD meets a grim reality.

Maps aren't necessarily current, either. I once bailed off the Wonderland
Trail in Rainier after a partner took a bad fall. According to the map and the
GPS, there was a road just a few miles out that led to a paved road that led
to civilization. Great. Well, we get there, and after swimming through dense,
wet vegetation for a while, start finally seeing signs that, yeah, there was a
road there, about a hundred years ago.

18 miles as the bird flies can easily turn into two days' hiking in some of
that terrain, too.

~~~
jmspring
I live just north of Truckee. One day my GF had to go do some surveying over
towards Nevada City. The easy way would have been out to 80, down to NC, and
survey. Probably 2-2.5 hours of driving. I had the day free and said, "hey,
lets try the back way -- via Downieville, Forest, Alleghany, etc. She said
sure. That didn't work out so well.

Everything was going great, narrow roads crossing part of the Yuba River,
gorgeous country, tight switchbacks and dangerous drops. Ended up on Foote
Crossing Road, crossed the Yuba, climbed up a ways on a road maybe 2-3 wider
than my Tacoma. Come around a corner, a chunk of slate had slid down covering
the road days before. The options were backup 2+ miles or try and move the
rock. Having a tow rope, we tried to move the large rock -- it moved, just not
enough. After about 2.5 hours, a group came from the other direction and
helped us out.

You have to be careful when out there. Before I do something like that again,
despite thinking I was prepared, I'll do a bit more research and probably add
a high lift jack and some other toys.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Howdy neighbor! I'm not far away. I really like the Meadow Lake and Old Man
Mountain area.

It should be about 45 minutes flat from Truckee to Nevada City over 20. The
road you took is a nice drive, but yeah, that intersection at Tyler Foote is
no joke. If you take the wrong turn there, you'll end up like that woman that
got stuck in mud for a few days in the middle of a storm 11 miles out in the
middle of nowhere.

~~~
jmspring
I’m actually 45 min from Truckee - near Gold Lakes Highway. So I was including
that time :)

The roads are fun to explore, but you shouldn’t be on a schedule doing so.

------
grecy
One of the most shocking facts about the lower 48 is that it's impossible to
get more than 115 miles from a McDonalds.

That's not on a road - that's _anywhere_ in the lower 48.

I always assume nearby a McDonald's would likely be a gas station.

Growing up in Australia and now living in the Yukon this blows my mind. I just
drove 35,000 miles from Morocco to Cape Town in South Africa, and there were
zero McDonalds that entire time. [1]

The Lower 48 is extremely densely developed!

[0] [http://www.datapointed.net/2009/09/distance-to-nearest-
mcdon...](http://www.datapointed.net/2009/09/distance-to-nearest-mcdonalds/)
and [http://www.datapointed.net/2010/09/distance-to-nearest-
mcdon...](http://www.datapointed.net/2010/09/distance-to-nearest-mcdonalds-
sept-2010/)

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com/africa-expedition-
overview](http://theroadchoseme.com/africa-expedition-overview)

~~~
chrissnell
I've done a lot of expedition-style driving (can't stand the words
"expedition" and "overlanding" as they are used today) and that straight line
distance is very deceiving. I've been to many places that are many more that
115 road-miles from a McDonald's. A few places come to mind: deep in the
southern part of the Owyhee Desert along the NV/ID border (one of the least-
populated places in the Lower 48), and out in the Wah Wah Mountains [0] of
southern Utah.

There are some photos of these places on my IG:
[https://instagram.com/desertdefender](https://instagram.com/desertdefender)

[0]
[https://instagram.com/p/BjRFEeZDxBI/](https://instagram.com/p/BjRFEeZDxBI/)

~~~
prawn
I'm a big Utah fan but always limited by being there with a rental car. This
spot looks amazing:

[https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk63o62gzUm/?taken-
by=desertdefe...](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk63o62gzUm/?taken-
by=desertdefender)

~~~
chrissnell
That spot is my favorite campsite anywhere. Here's a video pan that shows it a
little better:
[https://instagram.com/p/Bi0dm0Tj2Vz/](https://instagram.com/p/Bi0dm0Tj2Vz/)

Part of why I love it is the pure awesomeness of the location: it commands a
view over a large part of the UT/AZ border clear down to the Grand Canyon. It
gets beautiful sunrises and sunsets and it's breezy but not wind-whipped. The
camping is pretty bad if you sleep in a ground tent because of the deep sand
but we slept in our trucks so it was fine.

The other thing that I love about the place was how I first found it. I was
combing Google Maps satellite view in a SF hotel room late one night and found
the almost-invisible track out to the edge of the cliff. A few nights later, I
was there, driving it. I headed out to the spot alone, well after midnight.
Camping alone is always a little freaky but camping at the end of a five mile
dead-end trail was really spooky. The trail is super gnarly and overgrown.
There are washouts and the last half-mile is in deep sand. I went to sleep
that first night on the point not knowing what lay before me. I woke up the
next morning and was stunned at the incredible view that I'd stumbled upon. It
will always be among my favorites.

~~~
grecy
I love your instagram, and based on your description here it sounds like
you're ready to head out far and wide!

I'll be back in the Yukon in ~18 months, it would be great to show you
around.. and I highly recommend Alaska. After that you really should consider
a run down to Argentina - it's simply stunning and totally achievable.

West Africa was like another planet entirely. I wild-camped like you describe
virtually every day for an entire year - always in stunningly beautiful places
down nasty tracks far away from other people. Now East Africa continues to
impress each and every day!

~~~
chrissnell
I'd love to make it up to Alaska. I do most of my trips with a core group of
friends that I've been traveling with for the last ten years or so. It's tough
to coordinate schedules so we usually end up doing about 7 days together in
the late spring. Given the distance involved with a Yukon trip, it just hasn't
been feasible to get up there. We're thinking about a Baja trip but I would
have to ship my truck to L.A. from Kansas because it just takes too long to
get down there at 55 MPH.

Africa is a dream. I would have loved to have driven down the west coast
before Mauritania got so dangerous. I once read a book called "My Mercedes is
(not) For Sale" that got me hooked on the area. Suwame Magazine is a place
that I want to see before I die.

~~~
grecy
> _Given the distance involved with a Yukon trip, it just hasn 't been
> feasible to get up there._

Get on the Alaska Marine Line ferry from Bellingham Washington up to Haines or
Skagway, AK. In the off season it's cheaper and faster than driving, and
you'll see tons of stuff you want to see - whales, eagles, glaciers, icebergs,
etc. etc.

> _I would have loved to have driven down the west coast before Mauritania got
> so dangerous._

Don't believe the hype. I personally met hundreds of people that drove it, and
dozens that have driven it every year for 10+ years, and not a single person
has ever had problems. Not even once. There are a lot of roadblocks where they
check your paperwork - they're keeping everyone safe!

> _My Mercedes is (not) For Sale_

I read the same book to help build my stoke, loved it too!

------
sarah180
18.7 miles is a long distance. If you're 18.7 miles from the closest motorized
access point, you're in the middle of 1098 square miles of untouched land.
Based on my memories of exploring the woods as a child, you could spend a full
year getting to know the details of even a single square mile of natural
landscape.

I think it's an interesting irony here that, primarily because of motor
travel, we imagine that an 18.7-mile radius is not that substantial. (Yes, a
marathon is more distance than that, but those are usually on paved roads and
not through wilderness. The legend is that the first to run a marathon died of
exhaustion on its completion.)

~~~
leoh
!8.7 is not a long distance if you are in good shape. I regularly do 12-18
mile hikes during the weekend, sometimes with significant elevation gain.

~~~
starpilot
About 5x slower if it's off trail, cross country terrain. Brush can be
impenetrable.

~~~
s0rce
Or you regret the adventure later when the entire off trail section was
through poison oak.

------
patcheudor
To be more complete "from roads, machines, and motors." I live in Idaho and
know for a fact you can get further than 18.76 miles from a road. The addition
of "machines and motors" brings motorized trails into scope and yeah, at that
point I believe it.

~~~
LinuxBender
I've been contemplating moving to Idaho. It is a beautiful place. I would like
to find a part of Idaho that has low crime, has at least 30mb internet and
ideally low maintenance land.

------
bagrow
Very dissatisifed with the evidence in this article (only national parks?), so
I did my own digging.

Here is a 2005 USGS map [1] color-coding nearest road distance for every 30m x
30m square [2] in the lower 48. Surprisingly, it seems to hold up the
article's claim reasonably well, and without resorting to discussing
'machines' or 'motors'.

[1]
[https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3011/report.pdf](https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3011/report.pdf)

[2] Edit: the map shows 1 km x 1 km averages of the higher-resolution 30 m x
30 m bins.

~~~
craftyguy
>only national parks?

Having just come out of spending over a week in the Pasayten wilderness, it's
most definitely not a national park..

~~~
Fripplebubby
Right, just to clarify, a "wilderness area" is similar to a national park in
that it is land that is set aside by governmental decree, but most things are
banned in a wilderness area, notably motor vehicles, whereas many national
parks have all sorts of development.

------
5555624
The actual title of the article does not mention roads, probably because they
"all motorized travel, including the legal use of motorboats on portions of
Yellowstone Lake."

>So the remote Thorofare location and radius shown here will not match values
calculated purely from the road network.

------
convivialdingo
I grew up in very rural NM, and while you can find a road in some of these
areas, I doubt you’ll see more than a few cars a month during peak times of
the year.

Just because there’s a road doesn’t mean that it gets much use. Some are only
used to haul animals, oil or timber a few times a year.

~~~
Avshalom
Some of them _were_ only used a few times a year. I don't know exactly how
remote you can get in NM but I know plenty of our marked roads go to mines
that haven't been active in a century.

------
toss1
Interesting data set, but what I'd want to know is what is the farthest you
can get from the farthest road.

This tells us that wherever we are, IFF we walk in one of the 2-3 the optimal
headings for that circle, we'll hit a road in ~18 miles max. That's the best
worst-case.

What about the worst worst case -- if we head in the most un-optimal
direction? How effed are we in that circumstance?

~~~
maxxxxx
In some place in the West you definitely can be very effed. I can imagine
Alaska being even worse.

~~~
volkl48
I just watched exactly that last weekend. Not even all that remote (Maroon
Bells-Snowmass Wilderness). Guy came down with appendicitis overnight, a 10mi
hike in from the nearest road/trailhead.

He was fortunate enough to be able to get out to a major trail and someone
with a PLB passed by and called it in, so they could get a helicopter out to
him.

But had he been on a slightly less popular trail, he might not have had that
luck, and it could easily have been 10 hours for someone to come across him
and then speed hike out to a cell signal.

~~~
maxxxxx
I just bought a satellite messenger for the case something goes very wrong.
Hope I'll never use it.

------
kingbirdy
I actually find this rather upsetting. I'd always assumed if you went to the
right places out west, you'd be able to get at least 50 miles or so from
anything if you wanted to. It seems the west isn't quite as wild as I wanted
it to be.

~~~
zippzom
Some of these roads are likely extremely remote logging or dirt roads though.
Some of them might not see a car for weeks at a time I would imagine.

~~~
spott
I expect some of these roads haven't seen anyone (person or car) for years.

"Roads" don't really seem to die. Once they are mapped, they show up
forevermore -- even if no-one is taking them and no-one is checking that they
are still navigable.

~~~
s0rce
The forest service, at least in some of the more "popular" areas in WA, CA and
OR sometimes rates the road on their motor vehicle use map so you know the
likelihood you'll actually be able to use it. On BLM land I've found map roads
that there is little no evidence of at all.

------
kyleblarson
I live in Mazama, Washington right on the edge of the Pasayten Wilderness (we
can run from the house and be in the wilderness in a few trail miles). It is a
massive, remote, beautiful place that even most people in Seattle have never
heard of. There are downsides to living so remotely but the upsides far
outweigh them.

~~~
cheeze
Seattle all my life and I've never heard of Mazama or Pasayten Wilderness -.-

~~~
kyleblarson
It's only 3.5 hours from Seattle in the summer when Washington Pass is open
and about 5 hours in the winter. Beautiful and worth a weekend visit.

------
lukasb
It looks like they limit the radius of wilderness to the US border. The circle
for Boundary Waters would be bigger otherwise, since the Quetico (on Canada's
side) is wilderness as well.

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
From the article: "Wilderness areas in Canada are not taken into account.
There is no Canadian national wilderness designation program like there in the
USA, and determining the boundaries of land with wilderness character in the
various parks would be difficult. Three US wilderness complexes have inscribed
circles constrained by the border with Canada, and a glance at aerial maps for
the areas north of the Mount Baker and Pasyaten wilderness areas show what
looks like roads and clear-cuts over the border. However, the Boundary Waters
wilderness is next to the vast Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, which
appears to be mostly primeval. So the radius for Boundary Waters could be as
high as 13.6 miles if allowed to go over the border."

~~~
lukasb
Ahhhh thanks for RTFA for me

------
UncleEntity
Just by looking at the first example you can actually "be more than 18.76
miles from a road" if you don't limit your radius by park boundaries. Probably
20-somthingish just eyeballing the first map without looking at other examples
where (maybe) multiple parks share borders.

~~~
ghaff
There's also the assumption that Wilderness Areas are automatically the
furthest from roads, machines, and motors. That may be true but I don't
automatically take that as automatically true given the size of some of the
National Forests out west. It's probably true given the different rules
governing Wilderness Areas vs. non-wilderness areas of forests. But I wouldn't
make a big bet.

~~~
bribroder
Their definition of wilderness area is quite broad and includes areas within
national forests that are "de-facto" wildernesses:

> Four categories of Wilderness area were considered for this analysis:

> \- Federal Wilderness Areas, designated by the 1964 Wilderness Act and
> subsequent congressional action. These are by far the best known and most
> numerous of the wilderness areas in the USA—there are about 750 of them,
> preserving federal land managed by the Forest Service, the National Park
> Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management.

> \- “De-facto” Wilderness Areas in National Parks: In most large National
> Parks (e.g. Olympic, Yosemite, Rocky Mountain), the bulk of the park’s
> backcountry has been officially designated as wilderness area. However,
> three large parks—Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier—have large
> undeveloped tracts that are managed by park staff as wilderness despite lack
> of official designation. For this analysis, the large primitive areas of
> these parks have been included, since park regulations in these areas are
> essentially the same as in officially-designated areas.

> \- State Wilderness Areas: In New York state (Adirondacks and Catskills) and
> Maine (Baxter State Park on Katahdin), large wilderness areas are managed by
> the State government. Large parts of these parks have been designated as
> official state wilderness areas and are managed in a similar fashion to
> federal wilderness.

> \- Tribal Wilderness: Finally, a handful of large Indian Reservations have
> designated large areas as Tribal wilderness. Perhaps the two most notable
> are adjacent to federal wilderness in the Wind River Range of Wyoming and
> the Mission Mountains of Montana. These are included in the overall
> wilderness areas.

~~~
ghaff
> “De-facto” Wilderness Areas in National Parks

National Parks, not National Forests. I wouldn't be certain that all remote
corners of National Forests are necessarily Wilderness Areas.

[ADDED: But from what I see, this probably encompasses all the remote areas
although others have calculated remote spots using different criteria.]

------
sixstringtheory
Yvon Chouinard mentions this in his excellent book “Let My People Go Surfing,”
where he says the furthest you can get from a road in the lower 48 is about 20
miles, near the headwaters of the Snake River in Wyoming. Cool to see some
methodology that lines up with that estimate.

------
dima55
It looks like you get 18.7 miles for the Thorofare area if you look at the
boundaries of the wilderness area, not roads. For OSM data, specifically, the
area is bigger than that: 21.7 miles. If yall want to play yourselves:

[http://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2017/09/25_pole-of-
road-i...](http://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2017/09/25_pole-of-road-
inaccessibility-of-the-contiguous-us.html)

and for more fun:

[http://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2015/05/06_poles-of-
inacc...](http://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2015/05/06_poles-of-
inaccessibility-in-the-san-gabriel-mountains.html)

------
jmpman
The first entry (Thorofare wilderness) seems wrong. It appears that they
incorrectly identified the wilderness complex boundaries as roads.

~~~
sqlacid
I saw the same thing for the only Adirondack entry on the list; there's on
spot that is technically private property surrounded by wilderness that
probably drops the distance in half. Sure somebody could put a road there, but
the effort would be insane.

------
mc32
The important thing to know is what the heading should be to that road, when
you’re lost. Knowing one is no more than 17miles from you max, when under
weather stress, does little good and offers little comfort.

~~~
mjevans
If you're REALLY lost look for powerlines, microwave towers, rivers, or easy
to build in low-lying areas.

If river, follow down stream.

Anything else, vaguely, follow the power / sight lines towards obvious markers
or a way of calling for help.

'way of calling for help' might involve tripping security sensors.

~~~
thaumaturgy
If you're lost, please stop moving and re-assess. If you have a cell signal,
make a call for help (911 is just fine). If you don't, hopefully you brought a
PLB. Go ahead and use it. If you can't make a call or use a PLB, then get out
your GPS and start following your track back the way you came (almost always
better than venturing deeper into the unknown just because there's supposed to
be a road up ahead). If you also don't have a GPS, then get out your map and
start figuring out how to go back the way you came in. If you don't have a map
... what the heck are you doing, anyway?

There are quite a few places where trying to follow water downstream, or even
powerlines, will get you even deeper into trouble.

In _most_ areas, people wait too long to ask for help, and they can make their
situation worse by trying to self-rescue. In most counties that have
wilderness areas, there's a county search and rescue team, all volunteers, who
are familiar with the area and will be perfectly happy to come and get you at
no cost. That comes with the added benefit that you'll get to meet some cool
folks, and if you suddenly get sick or injured or something else goes wrong,
people with first aid training will be right there.

SAR teaches kids, "if you're lost, hug a tree" for good reason.

~~~
mjevans
My above advice was /not/ for kids.

Things are very situational dependent. If you're reading this on hacker news
I'm /assuming/ my intended audience is an adult, probably intelligent enough
to not intentionally wind up somewhere bad, but has found themselves there
anyway.

If that happened they might not have a (working) phone and might also not have
anything else but their whits.

Kids, usually, have a parent or guardian that expects to know where they are,
so search and rescue is a reasonable expectation and staying near where you
were last known to be is the best policy.

Adults aren't likely to be missed for hours or days. While I am not an expert
it is my logical belief that reaching a situation where help resources can be
summoned is a better policy, and further, that the above steps are also the
most logical expansion routes FOR a search zone.

~~~
thaumaturgy
The approach when educating kids is a bit different, but the message is the
same: once a person finds themselves in a bad situation, the preference is to
stay put and ask for help, if possible.

> _the above steps are also the most logical expansion routes FOR a search
> zone._

It doesn't really work like that. Although there are books on the subject
(Lost Person Behavior) and some other efforts to figure out behavior
statistically, and local SAR managers will have some hunches based on
experience, nobody can entirely get into the head of a missing person and
judge with any certainty whether one direction or another is better during a
search.

Search managers are well aware that "follow water downhill" is common advice
going back to the boy scouts, but when a missing person inevitably encounters
some obstacle along the way, they deviate from that plan. The search area gets
big really quickly, and SAR teams are a limited resource. It's _way_ better to
respond to coordinates from a phone call or a PLB than it is to spend days
with a lot of boots on the ground.

~~~
harlanlewis
Great post. Just to emphasize this point:

> nobody can entirely get into the head of a missing person and judge with any
> certainty whether one direction or another is better during a search.

Let's say a group gets separated during a hike, and Bob goes missing. No one
noticed for a little while. Bob doesn't have a map but is fairly capable in
the outdoors.

Your group sends a couple people back to the last place he was seen. It's a
nice straightforward search area. Bob isn't there. Now we need to widen the
search area.

Bob might have followed a steam - and in the couple of hours it took to get
back to where he was last seen, he may have gone a couple miles.

Or he might have tried to get to a high point to look around. The nearest
likely hill is a mile away, but there's another option in the other direction.

Or maybe Bob retraced his steps and is headed back on the trail you all came
in on together.

All of a sudden your search area is 15 square miles, and with each potential
decision with every passing hour, it gets wider.

You could put complete trust in his abilities and just wait for him to self
rescue, but what if he gets hurt? What if he doesn't show up in a couple days?

Wouldn't it have been great if Bob had hugged a tree?

~~~
mjevans
In your context bob is with a group. The group knows where bob is.

THAT is the important distinction. As someone lost you KNOW you are known to
be lost AND have an idea where others SHOULD be looking for you.

AGAIN, my advice is for the inverse of this context, where you must report
your self as 'lost'.

------
diebir
Equaling remoteness with being a designated wilderness is not the best way to
find the most remote spots. Get on Tarantula Mesa or Upper Stevens Canyon in
Utah. It is not a wilderness, but a National Monument (the one shrunk by the
orange piece of shit in white house, btw), but these places are exceptionally
remote. Certainly more remote than Thorofare in Yellowstone.

------
agf
This is awesome! I've been near a few of these spots. However, some, at least,
of their data is out of date.

For the Adirondack High Peaks complex, much of the Tahawus Tract, which bounds
the circle on the southeast side, has been officially part of the wilderness
area for five or so years now. I used to work at the main visitor's center in
the area, and now work remote from about two miles from the northern edge of
the complex. I'd say that adds roughly a mile to the radius here, but it could
be a little less.

Also, in the near future, the bounds of the complex will change drastically at
the southeast edge. The Boreas Ponds tract has been acquired by the state, and
while it hasn't yet been officially designated as wilderness, when it is, it
will connect the High Peaks to the Dix Mountain Wilderness, making the overall
complex -- already the largest in the northeast -- something like 20% larger.
But it won't stop it being a crazy shape.

------
teawithcarl
Panhandle Lake is NOT the most remote place in the Boundary Waters. Not by any
stretch. A clay foot algorithm.

I’ve had 100 square miles alone to myself in the BWCA for days/weeks and know
the park well.

Since the BWCA is adjacent to the Quetico (on the Canadian side of the
border), the concept of remote skews much further north. Time of year is also
“remote” ... late October/early November is beautiful, if you don’t get “iced-
in” for winter and can neither canoe nor walk out.

A relatively remote lake is Lake Kiana, where I’ve been between two
simultaneous wolf packs (100 yds and 150 yards away in opposite directions).
BWCA is where Yellowstone re-populated its wolves from. That close to 20-25
wolves chasing deer in the deep of night ... you listen for the “yip, yip,
yip” of the pups trying to learn and keep up.

------
pathseeker
>where nature reigns supreme and no powered travel is permitted.

Except for airplanes and helicopters of course. There are no airspace
restrictions preventing you from flying over these locations and I know people
who have landed both planes and helicopters in these regions (although likely
illegally).

~~~
s0rce
You can fly over but you can't land. I'm not sure what the rule is about
jumping out of the helicopter hovering a few feet above. Clearly against the
spirit of the designated wilderness.

Planes are in fact really common sight over many of the Sierra Nevada
wilderness as east coast to west coast transcontinental flight paths go right
over the area, its a constant reminder you aren't really that far away. Some
of the wilderness along the CA coast feel quite remote as you see almost no
planes passing over you.

------
walrus01
Fun trivia: at the highest vehicle accessible road in WA state (Slate Peak
radar site), I have seen people get all the way to the top in a 1995 Toyota
Corolla. The road to get there is not so terrible. There are many truly gnarly
logging roads and things that will require a serious lifted 4x4 in first gear
with AT tires. But all those are at lower elevation.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=slate+peak+wa&oq=slate+peak+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=slate+peak+wa&oq=slate+peak+wa&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.2316j0j7&sourceid=chrome-
mobile&ie=UTF-8)

------
dboreham
I live close to the top few locations in the list, although I've not yet had
sufficient spare time to actually hike 20 miles off-road. But another
interesting thing about this area is how far it is from a "proper city". e.g.
8h drive to Salt Lake or Calgary. 11h to Denver and Seattle. I'm not aware of
any place in the lower 48 that's so far from metropolitian living. e.g. the
next place down the list : Sierra Nevada. If you lived in a town nearby, say
Mariposa : you're only 4h from San Francisco (assuming 580 is only moderately
stationary).

------
sandworm101
>>> The radius in miles shows how large a circle can be fit into each area,
and how remote each point is.

That distance is rather meaningless on the ground. Terrain matters. A big wall
climber can be only a few hundred meters from a road on a map but still days
away. On foot, 18 miles of Idaho pasture is much smaller than 3 miles of
Florida swampland.

I expect that there are parts of Lake Michigan that are more than 18 miles
from the nearest road.

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Alex3917
What are the largest contiguous privately owned parcels in the U.S.? And what
is a good way to find private landowners using GIS in general?

~~~
s0rce
Maybe the King Ranch in Texas?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ranch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ranch)

~~~
whatusername
For an indicator of scale -- the King Ranch is four separate plots that aren't
contiguous covering 825,000 acres.

Anna Creek Station covers 5,850,000 acres.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station)

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marune
The one in ME is wrong, there are roads in BSP.

~~~
abkfenris
It’s correct, the wilderness boundary line for Baxter follows the road. They
didn’t just use the park extent.

~~~
24gttghh
Nope, the [park tote] road at 46.011344, -69.061875 is within the "remote
radius" at peakbagger by about 450-500m. It's still in the top-50, but it's a
tad lower on the list.

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bytematic
To bad there is nothing in Wisconsin, one of the more beautiful states.

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omginternets
Just wait until you visit Western Europe.

~~~
walshemj
In northern Scotland id would assume Norway and Sweden you can get a long way
from roads Loch Ranoch area springs to mind

~~~
dboreham
Train there though.

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walshemj
This is in specific national parks though and includes all motorized vehicles
not maintained roads.

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jordache
The West is the Best!

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sctb
We've updated the title from “In the contiguous US, you can never be more than
18.76 miles from a road”, which breaks the submission guideline that asks for
the original.

~~~
alaskan_pedant
...though the original headline is itself incorrect. The analysis excludes
Alaska.

"Most Remote Spots in USA Wilderness Complexes" should read "Most Remote spots
in the Wilderness Complexes of the US Lower 48"

From the article's fine print:

> Alaska is excluded from this analysis, since the scale and character of
> wilderness there is simply very different than in the “Lower 48”. If Alaska
> wilderness areas were part of this project, the most remote spot would be in
> the middle of the Mollie Beattie Wilderness of the Arctic National Wildlife
> Refuge in the eastern Brooks Range, with an inscribed circle radius of 42.75
> miles. Ironically, however, rules for wilderness in Alaska are different,
> and airplane landings are permitted in most areas. So in some ways you are
> more remote in the Thorfare area of Wyoming.

