An impressive recovery...

[+ltleelim]

I wanted to share an impressive recovery effort that I discovered in Yosemite. I was on a backpacking trip down the Old Tioga Road and Aspen Valley Road with my wife (mjleelim) and our friend Wintertime in August.

 

Here is a picture of HR0846:

 

As you can see, a tree fell on top of the marker a long time ago, but it just missed the witness post. Someone else came along and chopped out a big chunk of the log to find the marker! It's hard to tell from the picture, but that log is about 3 feet in diameter. A bunch of debris had collected in that hollow over the years and it took me 15 minutes just to clear the debris to find the marker. I cannot imagine how long it took to chop through the log!

 

I think LML of the U.S. Power Squadrons chopped through in 1986 to recover it. (See the datasheet.) Any real surveying crew probably would have come back with a chainsaw and probably would have filed a recovery. LML, whoever you are, that was a very impressive effort just to recover a survey marker!

 

This section of the Old Tioga Road hasn't been used as a road for many years. It was Wintertime's idea to hike down it and recover all the old survey markers along the way. There are 14 markers along this stretch of the Old Tioga Road and we found all 14. No, we were not carrying an ax with us and we do not plan to add an ax to our benchmark hunting gear in the future.

 

Lloyd

(ltleelim)

[Wintertime]

Hey, welcome to the benchmark forum, Lloyd!

 

Guess I should get going on that Tioga Road trip report. :-) As Lloyd mentioned, our hunt was very successful. We are even now talking about doing some more trips to off-the-beaten-path parts of Yosemite to make additional recoveries.

 

Perhaps we can convince Lloyd to post the (somewhat harrowing) story of the trip that he and Meg made up Ackerson Mountain a few weeks ago to recover HR2852. He posted some information on Geocaching.com, but the full report is even more interesting.

 

Patty

[Wintertime]

For some reason, there isn't an EDIT button on my posting, so I'll mention here that it was Bald Mountain that Meg and Lloyd climbed to recover HR2852, not Ackerson Mountain. I was thinking of the quad name, which is Ackerson Mountain.

 

Patty

[+shorbird]

It's always reassuring to see that there are others out there who will go to great lengths for a recovery. Thanks for sharing the picture!

[RV'n Iowans]

Now that was an impressive find. I'm new at all of this (2 months), and have a few Benchmarks recorded, but one like that would definitely be a great addition to my list. Right now I'm still trying to learn more and more about Benchmark hunting.

 

Absolutely fascinating (and confusing), to say the least

 

Dick