alt Hacker NewsPoles of Inaccessibility in the San Gabriel Mountains
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Context for non-Los Angeles residents: the San Gabriel Mountains are those seen looming behind downtown LA in many photos.
https://www.treehugger.com/special-places-in-the-san-gabriel...
Also probably context for many LA people, as most seem to consider those mountains a Hollywood backdrop, not a place you can be in 90 minutes from anywhere in LA (with favorable traffic).
Living here in So Cal, where the mountains are a constant presence.
Yet, I still stare and wonder. Despite people having been here for thousands of years, I look at a ridge, or a spot on the mountain, and just wonder "has anyone been there before".
There are all sorts of reasons to not "go" there. There's "nothing there" to go to. It's hard to get to. There may not even be an animal trail up there. Even the sheep are smart enough to leave it be.
But I wonder.
I look at the ridge few miles north of my house, and, in the back of my head, I have a Plan to hike it someday. Just walk the ridge. It doesn't seem arduous, it's not Everest. Seems like only ("only") 15 miles.
But I do wonder, if anyone has done it before, and were they thinking about it like I was.
somewhat sad to say that if you follow the map link (https://caltopo.com/m/4N7A) there's in fact a trail right next to the "point of inaccessibility" that includes trails + roads.
The path was added to OSM two years ago, which is after the analysis was done. OSM is a moving target!
It turns out that Claude at least loves devouring arcgis maps, and has already found interesting things about my area that were always out there, but not correlated.
I once made a similar map at work, but for the whole USA. You can view it if you use onX Hunt - called the "Roadless" layer under "Roads Trails & Rec."
This reminds me of something I saw on a backpacking blog sometime last year. Project Remote, a family that's finding and hiking to all the "most remote" place in each state of the USA. Here's some of the statistics:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240621094642/https://www.proje...
The most surprising one to me is: Least Remote: Kansas (0.8 miles from a road).
As someone who lives in the very densely populated greater Boston area, Kansas doesn't exactly strike me as a prime candidate for not being able to get away from roads.
Their website seems to have been commandeered by some Indonesian online casino scam thing in late 2024 and is now offline. I'm unsure of the ongoing state of the project.