Diving off the ramp of a C-130 at 18,000 ft/5486 meters into pitch black night.

quote:

Originally posted by xgrunt:
Maybe not remote people wise but a damn lonely place is anytime after dark on a two man Listening Post about 150 meters out from the Night Defensive Perimeter 15 miles from the Laotian border. It makes for a long night.

I can't even imagine, but as the son of a two war vet, I thank you for your service!

Home with a pissed off wife.

Dave

quote:

Originally posted by nopride2:
Home with a pissed off wife.

Dave

Now that was funny! I must say, in 21 years together MsAZW have never even had an argument. The secret to our relationship: we are both in love with the same man.

Spent a week in Guigang China in 2007. My wife is a Director for the American Hospital Association and AHA donated a brand new Middle School to Guigang Province. We flew to Beijing, spent a week there and then flew 3 hours Southwest by jet to Guigang. We then took a minivan a couple hours into the countryside until the road ended. We then walked on a dirt road with rice paddies on either side until we came to the village where the new school was located.. The native people were extremely short- no men over 5’4” and the women were all under 5’. These villagers had never seen Caucasions before. Looking at a map, I realized we weren’t all that far from the Viet Nam border. The people were very friendly and the scenery was awesome. This was truly the “Middle of Nowhere “.

Halfway across the Atlantic on the way to Africa. Very remote on that part of the flight, lots of blue on the flight tracking screen on that part of the flight.

Never been anywhere extremely remote. On one hunt I can remember sitting on a granite outcropping in the mountains of Northern California, near Truckee. The sun was going down, but way off in the distance you could see the lights from the line of cars snaking their way along the mountain highway to Lake Tahoe for the weekend. Not remote, but felt so far away from everyone at that moment.

quote:

Originally posted by Bud Meadows:
Spent a week in Guigang China in 2007. My wife is a Director for the American Hospital Association and AHA donated a brand new Middle School to Guigang Province. We flew to Beijing, spent a week there and then flew 3 hours Southwest by jet to Guigang. We then took a minivan a couple hours into the countryside until the road ended. We then walked on a dirt road with rice paddies on either side until we came to the village where the new school was located.. The native people were extremely short- no men over 5’4” and the women were all under 5’. These villagers had never seen Caucasions before. Looking at a map, I realized we weren’t all that far from the Viet Nam border. The people were very friendly and the scenery was awesome. This was truly the “Middle of Nowhere “.

I remember when I stepped off the plane in Hovd in Mongolia (it was a gravel strip) I was carrying a US newspaper. A man approached me and asked if I was an American. I said I was and he then asked me if I was done with the paper - he was a missionary had not seen any news in six months.

Ive been all over the world, and that includes Conro, Tex out of Houston many times! but Southern Mexico is where the world will get an enema, its the asshole of the world, but the hunting is awesome in some parts, and nothing lives in other parts..It probably belongs to Satan and the CArtel today, and it looks like where I was raised in the Big Bend of Texas. In fact its just an extension of it separated by a shallow river..I love the Sonoran desert.

North and west of Jebal Mara, Nyala Sudan near the the Sudan/Chad corner. At 8,ooo ft in a helo you can see the end of the earth.

quote:

Originally posted by Todd Williams:
Absolute most remote place would be middle of the Atlantic while in the Navy.

Most remote place I've spent any real time in would be brown bear hunting camp on Kamchatka Peninsula Russia.

Middle of the Pacific for me...on a small Destroyer. Hunting.....probably someplace along the Luangwa River...

When we lived in Alaska launched our boat on the Yukon and traveled down river for 250-300 miles to the Koyukuk. Went up the Koyukuk to the Huslia and went another 150 miles or so. Seen moose, grizzlies, black bear, wolf, otters, lynx, and muskox all from the comfort of our boat.
The closest place to buy fuel or anything else was at least 150 miles away by water.

In 1984 I drove my motorcycle (Yamaha SR500) from Ouagadougou to Paris. Between In Guezzam on the border between Niger and Algeria, and until you get to Tamanrasset you are pretty much in the middle of the Sahara, with no roads, which adds to the feeling of remoteness.

In the middle of Victoria Island above the Artic Circle, Hunting Muskox

Shemya Island, Alaska.

quote:

Originally posted by AnotherAZWriter:

quote:

Originally posted by nopride2:
Home with a pissed off wife.

Dave

Now that was funny! I must say, in 21 years together MsAZW have never even had an argument. The secret to our relationship: we are both in love with the same man.

I throw up in my mouth a little every time guys say they never fight with their wife! You're obviously NOT married to MY wife. LOL

Zeke

Lots of interesting answers. Rungwa Tanzania for me.

Rangiroa French Polynesia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangiroa

I went to shoot at Conro, Texas.

And saw a man wearing a t-shirt that said "I live in Conro. It is not at the end of the world, but you can see it from there"

I am very thankful that I have been able to hunt and fish some beautiful places.
Means more to me now than ever because of the travel restrictions. There are many places that I have not seen and hopefully will visit in the years to come.

quote:

Originally posted by Overland:
I spent a little over a month in Nahanni. It is some tremendously remote and beautiful country.

Had to google it. Wow, that's pretty country.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Brady:
Hi AZ
That was back in the eighties they were drilling exploration oil wells in the high Arctic Islands. A drill rig made to break down and fit in a Herc(c-130)90 loads to move a rig. Which was set up on the ice drilling through ocean floor. An ice strip beside the rig. Once it was set up we did the resupply and crew changes with the 727 and 737 interesting approach and landing just the runway lights and rig floating in space only other lights were the stars above.Bill

I remember being told of a 727 with tundra tires that was regularly landed on dirt in southern Alaska. Engines were too high up to ingest any dirt.

quote:

Originally posted by TomP:

quote:

Originally posted by Overland:
I spent a little over a month in Nahanni. It is some tremendously remote and beautiful country.

Had to google it. Wow, that's pretty country.

I was planning on returning to Nahanni for another month this August/September. That plan is now cancelled due to the pandemic. Perhaps it will work out again next year - we shall see.

This was published in a local paper here in Illinois yesterday. Talk about remote travel, at least when I was in Tajikistan,Brazil's Rio Negro river, Arctic Circle of Canada and Greenland, out in the Desert of Jordan, you still had a satellite phone.

I could not even imagine what these men went through.



Heading for unknown


As these hot summer months drag on, many Illinoisans might be thinking of cooler locales. Eighty-five years ago, an Illinoisan named Lincoln Ellsworth took this idea to the extreme when he and his co-pilot Herbert Hollick-Kenyon of Canada became the first men to complete a flight across Antarctica.

Lincoln Ellsworth was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1880. His father was among the city’s leading businessmen and even built one of Chicago’s first skyscrapers. He grew up in the opulent surroundings common to the well-to-do of the Victorian era, including a Michigan Avenue home with a large library full of stories of explorers and adventurers. The young man soon discovered a hunger for adventure that extended beyond studying the exploits of others. Instead, he sought to explore those spots on the globe which had not yet been written about in his books.

He happened to come of age in an era of exploration and innovation, nowhere more so than in the field of aviation. The press was full of adventure stories about brave pilots who flew the English Channel, fought dogfights in the skies over France, and zoomed ever higher and faster. A former Illinois mail delivery pilot and part time barnstormer would even become the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1927.

Lincoln Ellsworth heard the call too. He had trained as an Army pilot in World War I, and led a topographical expedition into the Amazon River and Andes Mountains of South America. Now he sought an even greater challenge.

During the early 20th century, explorers around the world set their sights on the poles, both north and south, among the least accessible points on the entire globe. Enduring the distance, harsh climate and unmapped terrain would be a true test of grit for any explorer seeking fame. An American engineer named Robert Peary led an expedition which was the first to reach the North Pole in 1909, and U.S. Navy pilot Robert Byrd was credited with being the first to fly over the North Pole in 1926. But the accuracy of both of these claims, especially Byrd’s, have been subjected to intense criticism because of the difficulties of precise navigation in the polar region.

Ellsworth had partnered with the famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in an attempt to overfly the North Pole in two planes in 1925, but the mission failed. Stranded after an emergency landing, and with no radio, the six members of the expedition were assumed to have been killed. Over the course of a month they built a runway by hand and crammed everyone aboard the one remaining serviceable airplane to fly back to their starting point. A second attempt in 1926 aboard the dirigible Norge succeeded, crossing from Spitsbergen, Norway, to Alaska.


After the crossing, Ellsworth continued to explore the Arctic, scouting parts of Labrador and flying over the Arctic islands north of Siberia on an expedition for the American Geographical Society. He even sought to reach the North Pole by submarine, but had to abandon the project.

Now he turned his sights on the opposite side of the globe. The South Pole had proved just as attractive for explorers, and just as difficult to reach. A British expedition at the turn of the century had lasted three years and reached as far as 82 degrees, 16 minutes south latitude (the pole stands at 90 degrees). A second British expedition led by Ernest Shackleton came within 112 miles of the Pole in 1909 but was driven back.

The British tried again in 1912 with the ill-fated Scott expedition, which reached the South Pole, but found a wind-blown and tattered Norwegian flag which had been left there six weeks earlier by Amundsen who had beaten them to the prize. Scott and his entire party were killed on the return trip. The brutal Antarctic conditions had proven too much to overcome for a whole series of explorers.

But Lincoln Ellsworth was determined to try. Combining the two great enthusiasms of adventurers of the era, aviation and polar exploration, he set out to become the first to pilot an aircraft all the way across Antarctica, through the hazardous weather and wind, and across thousands of miles of uncharted airspace. It would be, he believed, the greatest aviation achievement in history.

It turned into something much more.

Setting out in 1934 aboard the steamer Wyatt Earp, named for the Illinois native whose adventures had captured Ellsworth’s imagination in his youth, Ellsworth and his team reached their base camp at Dundee Island, near the Ronne Ice Shelf of northwestern Antarctica. He picked the sturdiest aircraft he could find for the harsh conditions, a Northrop 2B Gamma monoplane, made of all metal and named Polar Star.

It was no match for Antarctica. The plane was crushed by ice on its first trial flight on the continent. After repairing his aircraft, Ellsworth tried again that fall. This time he was thwarted by bad weather conditions.

“Your Polar Star has traveled farther and flown less than any other plane,” a friend said to him after the failure of the second mission.

But Ellsworth was undeterred and resolved to try again. In 1935, along with Hollick-Kenyon, Ellsworth and Polar Star at last started across the continent, lifting off at 4 a.m. on November 23. The flight was every bit as harsh as Ellsworth expected. Their first landing was so rough that it furrowed the metal of the fuselage and broke the radio. Navigation remained iffy. At one point he and Hollick-Kenyon realized they were more than 200 miles off course.



“Heading for unknown,” Ellsworth wrote in his journal. “Bold and rugged mountain peaks across our route lay ahead, some of which seemed to rise almost sheer to 12,000 feet as far as they eye could see. I named this range ‘Eternity Range.’”

When he crossed the 80th parallel, Ellsworth dropped an American flag from the plane, symbolically claiming the vast land beneath him for the United States.

One leg of the flight lasted only 30 minutes due to poor visibility which held on for days, but they pressed on. Another leg ended with the pair flying into a blizzard which lasted for eight days. They dug the plane out of the snow using a teacup.

Continuing on toward their goal, Admiral Byrd’s Little America camp, the plane finally ran out of fuel. They finished the expedition on foot, meeting up with the Wyatt Earp on the coast of the Bay of Whales, 2200 miles from where they had started. Along the way Ellsworth had claimed more than 350,000 square miles of the continent for the United States.

Returning home, Ellsworth was welcomed as a hero. He was honored by both Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His expedition’s path was marked by newly named geographical features such as the Ellsworth Mountains and Ellsworth Land. Polar Star survived the journey and was brought back aboard the Wyatt Earp. It was donated to the Smithsonian in 1936 and remains on display at the Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Ellsworth returned to Antarctica for another expedition in 1938-39, exploring more uncharted territory. A follow-on expedition was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War II. He never returned to the continent, so much of which he claimed for the United States.

Lincoln Ellsworth died on May 26, 1951, in New York City, where the hall of the American Museum of Natural History dedicated to Arctic and Antarctic exploration bears his name.

On a solo exploration cave dive in the Devils Cave System in Florida. 7300 feet from the entrance. At the time only 3 people had ever been back to that part. Doubt it has reached a dozen yet.

Don

I'm gonna say the southern ocean, between South Africa, South America and And Antarctica. Your boat sinks there, you could be waiting a while and the weather is notorious.

Grizz

For me, it would have to be somewhere up in the Northern part of Alaska. But, that's not really remote anymore!

Fishing on Christmas Island. When I was there there was one flight every week or two and a ship came with island supplies one time per month. Beautiful place and very friendly people.