Secluded areas

lilknifekid

lilknifekid

Joined
Aug 28, 2008
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Ive been looking through the campsite pic thread and seeing all these pics of areas that seem like they have never been touched by man. How do you find these places? The only one I can think of near me is a state park which means no camping or fire or taking firewood unless you have a permit.
 
Many people while hiking stay on trails. It is amazing the beauty you can find by wandering off trails. However, if you don't know the area very well and/or don't have a map, getting lost is a possibilty. So be careful.
 
First, you get a little different perspective on photos that often crop out man made features. As Tonym says, you can also go off trail and even in popular spots, that will get you outside of human traffic. Curiously, I actually find that some of the more local areas are less busy than the bigger National forests if only for the fact that many people feel a need to drive 4 hrs to go camping and they snub their nose at the tiny 300 acre park in their backyard.

Finally, I can't vouche for your state forests and rules you are under. Many of the parks in Michigan have little or no problem with taking and using downed wood (within reason). You can also use a twig stove with shielding on the ground to house a small fire in a non-designated pit. Again, the legality of this varies by place and it doesn't hurt to determine what is legal or not in your area. Practicing fire like bowdrill or flint and steel is usually not a problem as long as you don't encourage an open flame. This is about the same thing as lighting up a cigarette. Which for most places hasn't been banned yet (YET).....
 
What both these guys said. You can find seclusion anywhere around here if you go a few miles past most trailheads-most people don't go very far to camp out, with the distance often in yards rather than miles.

What I like to do is start on a trail, and then follow a waterway, or the ridgeline of what passes for a mountain. Mountains, rivers, and streams tend not to move, so getting lost is a minimal concern if you stick to one. When you get miles off the trail, even if the surroundings are mundane, it still seems kind of special, because you know that other people will rarely, if ever, see what you're seeing. Feels that way to me, anyway.
'Course I've followed a game trail, happened on to a stream, happily followed a series of small waterfalls, sat to fantasize about how "I bet noone else has ever seen this", and looked down to see a couple of empty beer cans, too:rolleyes:
 
we have an area just 54 miles from here that is public , supervised by parks & wildlife in tex.one can go in just a mile or a little more & be be real isolated. the area is all bodark, thorny vines & thick as hell. you have to crawl , go real slow & continouly work thorny vines & branches from your progress. the reason no one goes back there is because most people are lazy & afraid of a few scratches. we have yet to see a person even 1 & 1/2 miles back in. great to have a place of isolation so convienent .
dennis
 
lilknifekid said:
Ive been looking through the campsite pic thread and seeing all these pics of areas that seem like they have never been touched by man. How do you find these places? The only one I can think of near me is a state park which means no camping or fire or taking firewood unless you have a permit.
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I think a lot of the areas you see pictured here are of areas that have been extensively logged in the past or have had a lot of other human activity like mining or military maneuver and firing ranges. Like Dolly Sods. They look wild now because the logging and development has gone away, but it will be another century or two before they look truly wild again.

That said, areas without development are all around most of us. They just don't get the publicity and traffic of popular, easily acessable destinations. I do agree with you on park restrictions though. But if you think about it, popular parks would be picked clean as if by swarms of locusts if everyone took wood and plants as they wished.
 
One of my favorite spots to go is a place I kayak to when the water is high enough. It is only accessible by personal watercraft, and I have never seen another person in this area, even though on a calm day with no wind I can occasionally hear kids playing in their yards a few hundred feet away. It is not far from a small town in WI, but at the same time, it is very remote. These places are everywhere, you just gotta get out there, talk to some locals, and most importantly, never stop exploring.

JGON
 
There is probably a lot more state owned land close by than you think. Check with your local conservation dept.
 
Many of the trails in state parks from when they were formed until today are still visible, if not overgrown. With the hand holding government, and the want to create trails accessible to all people, many of the rougher, "iffy" trails through state parks have fallen out of use for decades, but are still visible if you look for them. I know of many people who prefer to walk the old trails in the state parks around where I live for two reasons 1) less people 2) more senic
 
Look for National Forests or BOL sirs in your area. They have less restrictions and less people than nt'l parks.
 
If you can find places that take a significant physical effort to reach, you will probably find some solitude. This is especially true if there are no marked or maintained trails.

Almost all of the pictures I post are in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks, and virtually all of those pictures are of locations that require a minimum of a full day hiking to reach (meaning more than most people will do for a dayhike that requires a round trip in one day). Some areas have a fair number of people, especially near the John Muir Trail and Mt Whitney, but other areas see very few people. I have wandered off trail to locations that had absolutely no trace of human presence. And there is the added bonus that none of these parks were subjected to significant logging or mining.

Wherever you live, you could probably find similar locations. I know that some places I used to visit as a teenager in upstate NY had solitude. Find out where everyone else is going, and then go somewhere else.
 
lambertiana said:
If you can find places that take a significant physical effort to reach, you will probably find some solitude.
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Likewise, the prospect of getting one's feet wet will keep about 99% of the populace out of a given area.
 
While it sucks that I live on the edge of a large metropolitan area, I choose to live here because I have access to a huge variety of wild lands by just traveling a short distance in any direction!

I live at the base of a large mountain range (~11,500'), so I can pop up into the mountains in just minutes (got a bunch of snow last night!). Right in back of my house I have hills (they would be called "mountains" in many places) where I can hike and off-road any time I wish. In one hour I can be out on the ocean, in the high desert (Mojave), or low desert (Colorado). In a couple hours I can be high up in the southern Sierra, or below sea level in Death Valley. We spend every weekend out exploring somewhere....it's a way of life!

I just don't take pictures.
 
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