Forum of Lists

Nice work on these lists. Another one that could go on the MT list is Mission Mtns Tribal Wilderness on the west side of the Missons. HP is McDonald Pk, 9820'.

BTW, John you can get rid of the photo I sent for McDonald Pk. Not sure what peak that photo shows, but it's not McDonald.

Nevada complete! 42 wilderness areas.

Issues
1) East Humboldts Wilderness - I believe 11140 A is the HP, although Hole in the Mountain Peak lies just outside the USGS boundary, so it would be good to check this on a newer map.
2) Jumps Springs Wilderness - I think 5604 is the HP, although it was near the USGS boundary and the boundary did not seem to follow any topographic features, so this would be a good one to check on a newer map.
3) North Black Rock Range Wilderness - I think 8687 B is the HP, but the HP may also be just outside of the NE USGS boundary.

TWorth wrote:Nice work on these lists. Another one that could go on the MT list is Mission Mtns Tribal Wilderness on the west side of the Missons. HP is McDonald Pk, 9820'.

Thanks, Tim. I wasn't aware of this wilderness area. Do you know what the best source is to find all wilderness areas?

Not really sure I want to delve into tribal wilderness areas since they do not belong to the National Wilderness Preservation System. This covers all US wilderness areas:
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS

So, will we be counting all wilderness areas under the following agencies:
BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service, FS and NPS? If so, I will need to find boundaries for some that aren't listed under the USGS boundaries I have been using thus far. If you know of other sources for their boundaries, apart from NG TI maps, please let me know.

I found the HPs for all Washington wilderness HPs, including the 3 whose boundaries I had to find elsewhere. Finding the HPs of the two island wilderness areas was kind of fun, as I had to check the highest elevation of each island (> 100 islands).

I am very confident on having found all wilderness HPs. I did find what I believe to be a minor error for Sloan Peak, the HP of the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness. The Proximate Parent, "Kololo Peaks", is 11.3 miles away, even though the Isolation is listed as 1.25 miles.

I also found one discrepancy with the peakbaggers.com list, as they had Norse Peak as the HP for Norse Peak Wilderness, but it is actually Fifes Ridge West. It's good that we do these areas ourselves, because I have found at least one discrepancy for every state so far, except one.

My next step is to go back to the states I had previously done and try to find the HPs of wilderness areas not listed here. If I can't find a good map for boundaries, I'll include them in the list, but leave them blank.

Since I discovered that I hadn't done all wilderness areas in every state, I've gone back and found the HPs for those states I had already done. I still need to do Nevada though, which has 22 left to do. The Washington, Idaho and Montana lists posted previously are already complete. All new HPs were pretty easy to find. Here are the Excel files.

I have added the BLM wilderness areas for Nevada and so it is finally done - all 68 wilderness areas! There were no new issues from the last time I posted Nevada, as the online maps for these wilderness areas were very precise. For other issues, see the previous Nevada post above.

Utah is now complete.
I only had trouble with one wilderness area, which is the Dark Canyon Wilderness. According to the National Geographic Trails Illustrated map I was using online, the boundary generally follows the rim of the canyon; however, their preview version doesn't have the resolution to pick off individual contours very well. The highpoint is almost surely on the boundary, so it would be best for someone with a real paper version of the map to determine the highpoint.

JFToujours wrote:I only had trouble with one wilderness area, which is the Dark Canyon Wilderness. The highpoint is almost surely on the boundary, so it would be best for someone with a real paper version of the map to determine the highpoint.

Looking at the quads, there are at least eight candidate HPs, all interpolated @ 8220':
37.70671 -109.94734
37.83804 -109.87044
37.7265 -109.86977
37.7559 -109.88912
37.7809 -109.87783
37.80055 -109.89232
37.80407 -109.91221
37.79498 -109.92741

John Kirk wrote:Looking at the quads, there are at least eight candidate HPs, all interpolated @ 8220'

Yeah, my impression was that the highest point was 8220', using the partial boundary shown on the free versions of the USGS maps on Acme and Topofusion. But I couldn't decipher for sure using the NG TI map using the rest of the boundary.

There is one more candidate I identified, and looks the most interesting because it is inside the largest closed 8200' contour:
N37.76159 W109.87616

Only one wilderness area: West Sister Island
There are 4 closed 615' contours and I chose the largest of them as the HP, interpolated to 617.5'. One of the smaller ones has a point elevation of 616' though.

This is one of ten wilderness areas closed to the public. Since so few wilderness areas are closed to the public, I would like to suggest that those that are closed be noted on LOJ, but that no one would be able to log them. I think some Colorado county parks (for example) go overboard on restricting public access to "sensitive" areas, partly as a reaction to those who are less conservation-minded who have damaged other areas. But I think there is good reason to prohibit human access to this lonely island because of its unique and likely fragile habitat.

Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska are all complete!

The only issue was Aggasiz Wilderness in Minnesota. This is swampy area and almost the entire area is above the 1145' contour, yet there is no 1150' contour. Thus I selected the HP as the highest point elevation (3-way tie for 1147') that is furthest from a 1145' contour.

No issues with the 2 wilderness areas with HPs in OK.

I have finished up Missouri now. All the wilderness areas except Paddy Creek had good maps online. As for Paddy Creek, I know the HP is on the boundary, but the old USGS boundary was pretty vague, so its precise location is uncertain.