Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

hakaimagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 66 posts

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#41

Post by cozzyd »

canjobear wrote: post #33
notsuoh wrote: post #2

I've always been really interested in these far flung places and used to spend hours on Google Earth scanning the middles of the oceans for islands like this and think about how to visit them. In particular I've always been fascinated by Tristan da Cunha which has a village and is livable if you can get there: https://wikitravel.org/en/Tristan_da_Cunha And Bouvet Island, which is totally uninhabited: https://en.m.wik…

If you can make it to Svalbard, it's worth it. It's like nothing I have ever seen before or since. Pictures don't do it justice.

I'm definitely interested in making it there! I need to find an excuse to do some research at Ny Alesund though. I've been to the South Pole and I figure Ny Alesund is the northernmost I can reasonably go (My current record for positive latitude is ~72.6 N at Summit Station, Greenland. Ny-Alesund would get me an extra 6 degrees.)

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#42

Post by cozzyd »

notsuoh wrote: post #2

I've always been really interested in these far flung places and used to spend hours on Google Earth scanning the middles of the oceans for islands like this and think about how to visit them. In particular I've always been fascinated by Tristan da Cunha which has a village and is livable if you can get there: https://wikitravel.org/en/Tristan_da_Cunha And Bouvet Island, which is totally uninhabited: https://en.m.wik…

Thanks for sharing that documentary, I really enjoyed it! I myself have been fascinated by South Georgia and Kerguelen recently.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#43

Post by sandworm101 »

owenversteeg wrote: post #31
sandworm101 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try flying a helicopter in the mountains during an alaskan blizzard. All the money in the world wont get you there any faster. And there are sides of cliffs where air rescue is impossible in even the best weather.

Mm, "all the money in the world" would totally get you there faster. You'd be able to fly in a helicopter with a FIPS (which allows flight in full icing conditions without limitation.) You might not want to get too close to the ground for various reasons, but then parachute put some guys with Jetskis and drop down supplies and oxygen in strategic places and you can damn well get to where you want to be - significantl…

Icing? That isn't the issue. It is wind and visibility. Helos don't fly in blizzards.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#44

Post by protomyth »

missedthecue wrote: post #37
drdeadringer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always been really interested in these far flung places This is what keeps me interested in such things regarding the USPS and similar [0]. How are they fed? Funded? Staffed? Otherwise maintained with supplies e.g. mechanically, computationally, electronically, &c? I do not think my reference video is so far fetched regarding such a question. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhRFaY8A9cA

The USPS doesn't actually deliver everywhere. There are places in NC, CA, and NY that don't get mail delivered.

They definitely don't deliver everywhere and that actually causes further complications. I detail a lot of it in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22988096

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#45

Post by 14u2c »

jsackmann wrote: post #11
notsuoh wrote: post #2

I've always been really interested in these far flung places and used to spend hours on Google Earth scanning the middles of the oceans for islands like this and think about how to visit them. In particular I've always been fascinated by Tristan da Cunha which has a village and is livable if you can get there: https://wikitravel.org/en/Tristan_da_Cunha And Bouvet Island, which is totally uninhabited: https://en.m.wik…

Those Antarctic islands are the Balleny Islands. I took a cruise a couple of years ago from NZ to Antarctica, and we were able to land on Borradaile island [1], one of the Ballenys. I can't find my notes for the exact figure, but the historian on board said that, including us, only a few hundred people had ever set foot there. Many expeditions pass within sight of them, but landing is treacherous--IIRC, we went onsho…

If you took pictures please consider adding them to the Wikipedia page. There seem to be relatively few available.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#46

Post by 14u2c »

sandworm101 wrote: post #10
rfergie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous! It would take longer to get to the moon and back if you walked there. There is no place on Earth that you couldn't get to quicker if your budget was the same

Try flying a helicopter in the mountains during an alaskan blizzard. All the money in the world wont get you there any faster. And there are sides of cliffs where air rescue is impossible in even the best weather.

I feel like if you were to devote huge a chunk of the top engineering talent in the world for 10 years, as was done with the moon missions, then it would certainly happen.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#47

Post by ThePadawan »

croissants wrote: post #25
notsuoh wrote: post #2

I've always been really interested in these far flung places and used to spend hours on Google Earth scanning the middles of the oceans for islands like this and think about how to visit them. In particular I've always been fascinated by Tristan da Cunha which has a village and is livable if you can get there: https://wikitravel.org/en/Tristan_da_Cunha And Bouvet Island, which is totally uninhabited: https://en.m.wik…

I think this is more mainstream than the remote places you linked (and, since it's pretty close to the Australian coast, not that remote) but Ball's pyramid is an uninhabited place that gives me strong "hard bonus mini-boss for the completionists" vibes [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball%27s_Pyramid

Well you definitely couldn't land the Highwind on it. Would make sense that you need a Gold Chocobo.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#48

Post by 082349872349872 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #43
owenversteeg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm, "all the money in the world" would totally get you there faster. You'd be able to fly in a helicopter with a FIPS (which allows flight in full icing conditions without limitation.) You might not want to get too close to the ground for various reasons, but then parachute put some guys with Jetskis and drop down supplies and oxygen in strategic places and you can damn well get to where you want to be - significantl…

Icing? That isn't the issue. It is wind and visibility. Helos don't fly in blizzards.

Anyone who can get them to fly well at altitude will probably also have plenty of orders from india or pakistan or both.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#49

Post by dheera »

canjobear wrote: post #33
notsuoh wrote: post #2

I've always been really interested in these far flung places and used to spend hours on Google Earth scanning the middles of the oceans for islands like this and think about how to visit them. In particular I've always been fascinated by Tristan da Cunha which has a village and is livable if you can get there: https://wikitravel.org/en/Tristan_da_Cunha And Bouvet Island, which is totally uninhabited: https://en.m.wik…

If you can make it to Svalbard, it's worth it. It's like nothing I have ever seen before or since. Pictures don't do it justice.

I went to Svalbard in the dead of winter. Very fun experience, not seeing the sun for a week straight.

The downside of Svalbard though is that it's very difficult to randomly explore on your own. There aren't any roads outside the settlements, and you need a rifle and a snowmobile and government registration to go anywhere outside it. Snowmobiles can be bought but are almost impossible to rent; rifles can be rented but if you don't have skills you can't expect to suddenly have them when faced with a polar bear in a life-threatening situation. There is zero infrastructure outside the settlements so it's not a joke.

So ultimately I was mostly confined to the town of Longyearbyen and vinicity but it was fun anyway. I managed to get to Bjorndalen and a couple of other nearby places via some locals who I found on Facebook, but that's about as far as I was able to get.

Don't expect the same level of exploration freedom you could get by, say, renting a car in Canada or whatever.

The thing I found most fascinating about Longyearbyen, ironically, is how normal life was there at a town so close to the north pole. People had gigabit internet access, a couple of bars, and a supermarket. Nothing was out of the ordinary, really, except for the lack of the sun.

Re: St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska

#50

Post by dheera »

notsuoh wrote: post #2

I've always been really interested in these far flung places and used to spend hours on Google Earth scanning the middles of the oceans for islands like this and think about how to visit them. In particular I've always been fascinated by Tristan da Cunha which has a village and is livable if you can get there: https://wikitravel.org/en/Tristan_da_Cunha And Bouvet Island, which is totally uninhabited: https://en.m.wik…

Not quite so remote but another thoroughly fascinating island is Miquelon-Langlade, part of St. Pierre et Miquelon.

What's thoroughly fascinating about both St. Pierre and Miquelon is that it's the last remaining French territory in North America, and located right off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

It's the only place in North America where you actually spend Euros and the cars have EU license plates. The supermarkets sell authentic French wine and chocolate and will charge you for grocery bags, just like in Europe.

The vast majority (upwards of 90% I believe) of the 6000ish residents though live on the smaller island of St. Pierre. The nearby much larger island of Miquelon, and the attached island of Langlade to its south, are vastly barren with a very basic settlement that has 1 restaurant and 1 bakery. There are a couple of inns on it, and I managed to rent a bike from the one I stayed at, and used it to bike down to Langlade. A few photos from my trip:

https://dheera.net/photos/places/spm

The road to Langlade is actually very well-paved until the very end. It's a very nice road for biking, although a little terrifying hearing the waves crashing into the island on both sides, some wild horses, and no humans in sight:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.dheera.net/photos/places/spm...

I love exploring these "politically interesting" islands.

Another one I explored is the Matsu Islands which are very close to the coast of China but under control of the ROC (Taiwan) government. It's also a very interesting place. As a part of the ROC, it's littered with 7-Elevens. But due to the history of the place, its signs claim it to be a part of Fujian province, though Fujian under the ROC rather than Fujian under the PRC. (Not here to debate the politics, it's just what the local signs say.)

Post reply on HN