Bought my elk tag the other day and plan on hunting the cascade unit.  I plan on hiking deep into one of the wilderness areas to get away from the road hunters and closer to the pressured elk .  Plan on camping out in the wilderness while I'm out there.  Anyone interested in going?

I don't pretend to know tons about Elk hunting in that area but getting a group together could help our chances as well as keep things safer.

Make sure to take into account logistics for packing meat out. I plan on doing the same in NE Oregon.

Yeah I've done a a couple of moose out of the middle of nowhere but at least we had a canoe then a boat.  Be a challenge no doubt.

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2014/09/search_continues_for_missing_h.html#incart_river

Group hunting beats this.

I have hunted a lot of places.  Some of the tougher ones to navigate when you get off the road  were AK, ND, CO. Each had it's own unique challenges but nothing has come close to when I got turned around a couple weeks ago while bear hunting in western OR.  It was so fucking thick and my GPS was running out of batteries.  I finally made it back to the road 2 1/2 hour after being lost.  When I got home I put fresh batteries in my GPS and I had walked within yards of the road numerous occasions and the path that I walked looked like someone threw spaghetti on a plate.

I know exactly what you mean. It can get sketchy quick.

You should get a compass and learn to use it if you don't already. I have a lot of friends who laugh at me because I typically grab a map and compass over a gps, but I have never had any reliability issues with the map and compass! If you got a small compass and your batteries went out on your gps at least you could walk in a straight line.

I have since bough a good topo map and thrown my compass in my day pack but the area I was in, I honestly didn't think it was possible to get that lost.  I was in the woods but it was no wilderness area.  

The actual trail I was on was less than 300 yards long.  I got turned around when I went off trail  maybe 50 yards.  Jungle comes to mind.

If you know where a few roads or land marks are, its not too bad.  I have worked my way around some areas just fine.  But I am pretty well in tune to where the roads are and where my position is so even if I get away from the car, I can usually find my way back.