>...the potential location—a spot on the road about eight miles from the nearest ranger station...

Lols to "a spot on the road" -- large format gear is not pleasant to carry around.

When younger, Adams did hike with large format cameras.

But later he built a platform on the top of his station wagon and used that.

A 8x10 camera weighs about 4kg. Adams used smaller formats most of the time, everything he'd need would be under 6-8 kg. I imagine someone like him would not settle for an inferior viewpoint with a easy hike as an alternative.

If you enjoyed this bit of photo sleuthing then I highly recommend film director Errol Morris' incredible tale of sleuthing regarding a photo from the 1850's (!) taken during the Crimean War:

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-...