High Sierra Topix

SSSdave wrote:
Easy cross country zones are those without difficult to step and move through open timberline areas where one can easily view surrounding high landform features to correlate your path against a topographic map.

Difficult areas to navigate through would include heavy forest where visuals of features are blocked, flat featureless terrain, areas where one is often down in ravines, canyons, or hollows difficult to view what is beyond or down about flats between a jumble of blocking ridges. And difficult areas to step and move through could be brushy areas, dense forest with lots of fallen logs, avalanche debris, recent forest fire zones, swampy areas, glaciate granite landscapes with abrupt small cliffs below topo map granularity, steep slopes, areas with large streams difficult to ford, talus, geologies with unstable footing, seasonally mosquito infested areas.

Totally agree with this assessment! The reason I made this post is to identify some specific places that have those good qualities and not the bad ones.

I'd go with the Tablelands. True to the name, you can walk around while mostly sticking to large, granite slabs. There's very little talus, which is nice for beginners and experts alike. It's beautiful as can be, and there's tons of great places to swim. Regarding passes, I'm not sure if it has a name, but the pass over the crest towards Big Bird Lake is very mellow. Same with the pass up to the head of Fergusson Creek.

I just ran across this older thread while searching for something else: Easiest X-C Passes.