Andy,
Not all the Elk are 10 miles in off the roads. If you pick non-wilderness country, you can have success within 3 miles of a road. Get a forest service map of the area you intend to hunt, and look for ways to get inside the private land on forest service. Another method i have used requires 2 vehicles. We look for an area from 7 to 10 miles between roads, drop a vehicle on one side, and head in from the other with compass and pack. If there is more than one person making the hunt, spread out, maybe meet at a common point halfway in. This can be productive. To get elk out, i built a game cart with a front tire from a motorcycle, and welded conduit with double handles on each end for a basket frame. I kept the hand brake on one end to slow on the downhill stretches, unfortunately, it takes good old leg power on the uphill grades. But it works great, you can snake it through thick country right on a game trail. It's alot more comfortable to have a camp set up right off an access road, and hunt in every morning, over a weeks time you can cover different country within a 10 to 20 mile radius until you figure out where the elk are. Elk hunting is not like deer hunting, they are not spread evenly across the country side. You have pockets of elk with lots of country in between. Half the fun of hunting them is figuring out where they are.
Good luck