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limpingcrab wrote:So, who's been at or near these spots?
Location #1 was initially the 2016 HST meet-up location at the lake by the same name. The proposed exit route was east down the pass by the same name to Goddard creek.
Location #2 is just north of the 2015 HST meet-up location down below Gallats lake & the Kern-Kaweah river.
Mav ain't messing around when he's looking for suitably remote & challenging locations for the meet-ups.
Is that distance as the eagle flies, or actual distance you have to walk to get there? Nobody actually straight-lines to a spot in the Sierra.
I have been to the two little lakes just north of the spot (Tunemah Lake map) It was the middle of a round-about trip I did so have no idea of how many days it would take if you just wanted to get there. That spot is actually not hard to get to if you come in from Blackcap Basin. Long, maybe, but not hard. Dumbbell Lakes is harder to get to, but shorter distance.
The most remote spot as far as "feel" for me was the North Fork of Bull Lake Creek in Wyoming Wind Rivers. There is no easy way in or out and I was pinned down in a two day August snow storm, soaked, running out of food, solo, and grizzly bears are in the area too! It is 25 miles from any public access trailhead and over at least one if not two passes, some with glaciers to cross. On the east, is the Wind River Indian Reservation, with no public access. I felt almost as remote at the confluence of Goddard and Disappearing Creek. Probably even harder to get to, but you are not pinned down by high passes that you cannot get out in bad weather.
Wandering Daisy wrote:Is that distance as the eagle flies, or actual distance you have to walk to get there? Nobody actually straight-lines to a spot in the Sierra.
The two points on the maps were as the eagle flies, it's a simpler way to measure than actual walking distance or effort. Lots of discussion on that back when this thread was started. I think it's about 25 miles on foot by the easiest route but only about 13 miles on a straight line. Maybe I'll just go there and walk a straight line
Easy is not necessarily correct! That is just lazy. I have the old TOPO program and even with this relic, it is not that hard to draw a line on the path you would take (trail or off-trail) . The program calculates the miles and makes a profile. Fine to use the straight-line method to pinpoint a short-list of possible areas, but then you need to do the work of figuring out walking miles. Better yet walking time, with a basic assumption such as 2mph for trail and 2 mph off trail and 1 hour per 1000 feet elevation gain.
Yep, we are all going to start walking straight lines to our destinations! Pretty handy to eliminate all the switchbacks.
Aw, shucks, I will have to bring my rope and rappel gear for those inevitable cliffs.
Well, we'll have a hard time calculating the most remote spot if we're talking about effort or time. The maps I posted were done with a computer program and I'm not sure how I'd calculate "most remote" by any other standards
By the effort/time standards I'd say this is the most remote I've been. About 1,500 ft up a wall about a mile upstream of Tehipite Dome and on the other side of the Kings River. The top would have been more remote if the Rough Fire didn't smoke us out 3/4 of the way up
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Great climbing photo! I always wanted climb that wall, but alas, I aged out of technical climbing before I got to it. Now I am just another old ex-climber who backpacks.
Yes, it is some work to figure out walking distances, but not as hard as you would think. Sorry, I did not mean to be so critical. I was working on the update of my guidebook, and being in the thick of it, doing exactly what everyone says is to hard to do, I probably over-reacted. I have built a database for the Wind Rivers with over 1000 travel segments, each with miles, elevation gains and losses and a travel time estimate. Now I can just make any route by mixing the segments that and in less than half an hour get distances and time estimates. It is a "bite-the-bullet" thing to build the database, but once done it is really magic!
I am gradually building a similar database on the Sierra, but it lags behind my Wind River database. I was just saying that once your computer program narrows down the choices, it really is not that hard to go onto a program like TOPO and draw a line, with the distance. Just separate the trail portion and off-trail portion to get a rough time estimate. It really works quite well.
Rogue--Tunemah has had a fish population for years, there are several posts in the forum that document that fact. Not seeing doesn't necessarily mean no fish.
True but after 3 days there I never saw a single fish hit the water.
If I never see a fish but figure there are I normally think they are big. I never once saw a fish at Wallace Lake.
Kinda nice to see this thread regenerated. This is a good one for the "off season". I agree that remote is not only about the beeline distance from a road. The amount and degree of difficulty of off trail travel also factors in. I agree with WD about Dumbbells vs the Tunemah area. Dumbbells is certainly harder and I think the hiking time is slightly more even though the distance is less than Tunemah (routes compared would be Dumbbells via Bishop-Knapsack-Cataract vs Tunemah area from Hoffman Mtn and a nearly 100 percent off trail route to Blue Canyon as per Tunechuck 2008). I think Red Spur Lakes take a bit longer to get to than either Dumbbells or Tunemah. At my (current and 1993, 2008) speed I figure Dumbbells or Tunemah are reachable with my standard backpacking set up (ie not all that light) in about 1.5 hiking days whereas I'd have a very hard time making Red Spur Lakes in 2 days. In spite of this, I still think some of the Bermuda Triangle (trailless NW Yosemite) still seem more remote than anything I've experienced in my favorite Goddard, Whitney, and Triple Divide 15' haunts. I think what gives Kendrick Creek and vicinity an extra wild feel is the thick brush in addition to the rugged topography. I figure you can get to the most remote spots (such as below the reach of the creek above Edyth and below the big waterfall) in less time than it takes to hike to Red Spur Lakes, but the pain involved getting there may in fact be higher (probably still have scars on my shins from that brush).
I haven't been to Tunemah Lake, but did camp down the hill a little at Bunchgrass [not so] Flat the day before plummeting 5K' down Tunemah Pass to Simpson Mdw. The "remoteness" was palpable but had a eerie feel in that we could see the lights of vehicles descending Hwy 180 to Cedar Grove!
