#3: [24-Feb-23]

#2: [26-Aug-07]

07-Jan-2001 -- I thought it possible that this journey might turn out to be an exceptionally easy one, as an online USGS map pegged the confluence point directly on the path of a county highway. I did not, however, know the map datum for the particular map I was looking at - so the actual WGS84 point might be some distance off the path of the road, which proved to be the case. This minor setback was compounded by my wife not feeling quite well enough for a road-trip that morning, and my efforts to roust a Sherpa from amongst my notoriously late-rising roster of friends met with no success.

Driving in from the south, County Highway G bears left ninety degrees in the vicinity of the confluence, but never approaches closer than about seven to eight hundred feet. Off the highway was a mix of trees, scrub, and snow that had settled to a depth of eighteen to twenty-four inches. I left the highway on foot at a promising-looking ingress point about 900 feet NE from the confluence where the woods looked more passable.

Approaching more closely, the area alternated between closely-packed deciduous trees and clearings of low, thorny scrub. The land itself undulated up and down as if criss-crossed by a series of ditches, and at least some attention had to be paid to the placement of each step. The snow cover hid fallen branches and concealed some of the deeper ditch recesses.

I nearly had to do a full orbit of the confluence point before zooming in because my dead-reckoning was highly flawed and it was difficult to get a reliable heading vector from my low-end GPS unit while moving so slowly through the snow. Fortunately there were few clouds, and the sun gave me a pretty good idea of where "south" was. Happily, upon arriving at the proper point the Magellan GPS Pioneer gave an exceptionally solid position reading (for this particular model), based on info from no less than nine satellites! I would say with 95% confidence that the spot I photographed from was within 15 meters of true, especially considering that the *elevation* reading from the GPS (much more susceptable to errors) was reading 909 feet, easily within 20 feet of the elevations read from the local USGS maps.