How far have you walked for a benchmark?

[+89SC]

My previous best was a 6 mile hike to Pointy Knob to look for a tri station that hadn't been recovered since it was placed in 1941. 2 miles were off trail and the knob was really overgrown. I actually made that trip twice because I realized that I'd only found the reference marks and not the station mark. I was a newbie back then.

 

JW1287

 

 

Saturday I headed up Flatrock Run Trail to try and find the tri station on Mt. Porte Crayon. It ended up being a 14.2 mile hike from 2400' to 4800'. That's not high for those of you out west but it's about as high as it gets in WV. It was another bushwack through some dense young red spruce. I wasn't the first one there but it's still a find I'm proud of. It's also the first I've seen set like this. The disk was brazed to a pipe and surrounded with a rock cairn. Too bad someone decided to beat on it with a rock bending the disc and tilting the pipe.

 

HW3478

 

 

 

I lugged an ammo can all the way up there and left it as a geocache. I'm waiting to see who else is crazy enough to make that hike

[+shorbird]

My previous best was a 6 mile hike to Pointy Knob to look for a tri station that hadn't been recovered since it was placed in 1941. 2 miles were off trail and the knob was really overgrown. I actually made that trip twice because I realized that I'd only found the reference marks and not the station mark. I was a newbie back then.

 

JW1287

 

 

Saturday I headed up Flatrock Run Trail to try and find the tri station on Mt. Porte Crayon. It ended up being a 14.2 mile hike from 2400' to 4800'. That's not high for those of you out west but it's about as high as it gets in WV. It was another bushwack through some dense young red spruce. I wasn't the first one there but it's still a find I'm proud of. It's also the first I've seen set like this. The disk was brazed to a pipe and surrounded with a rock cairn. Too bad someone decided to beat on it with a rock bending the disc and tilting the pipe.

 

HW3478

 

 

 

I lugged an ammo can all the way up there and left it as a geocache. I'm waiting to see who else is crazy enough to make that hike

 

Quite a hike!! Most of the marks I have found involve very little hiking--maybe the longest "hike" I've taken is less than a mile(one-way).

[+89SC]

It's the longest hike I've done awhile. Here is the tracklog. It's some rugged country there.

 

[mloser]

I walked in about 3 miles to find WHITE HORSE KW2987. The hike along the Appalachian Trail was rocky (as all of the AT in Penna seems to be) and a bit hilly, but it wasn't too bad a hike until I got to the last half mile, which was off-trail and across rocky and vegetation covered ground. Still not too bad, but the following week a friend and I walked back in and packed out the top half of the original stone monument for the station, set in the 1880s, which weighed 58 lbs. Now THAT was a hike!

[CallawayMT]

Nice hike! Mine was this one:

Lolo 9075

 

The hardest find I have ever accomplished! 12 hours of hiking, 14 miles, 3800 foot of elevation, no trail after the first 5.5 miles, a 100 year old section corner stone found, another corner searched for and not found, and two different peaks scaled.

 

CallawayMT

[+89SC]

Nice! You have real mountains out west.

 

This was also the first time I've found tower remains. You can see a rusty nail on the cairn in the benchmark picture and this is beside it:

 

[+Butano]

Duplicate post

Edited May 27, 2008 by Butano

[+Butano]

I just had to go and find the one labeled BUTANO over in Butano State Park. http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.aspx?PID=HT3303 That was about a 9 mile hike with the route that I took. It was an enjoyable day as I was out there. That was back in 2004.

The benchmark

Looking back at the benchmark, on the tallest peak.

[+Klemmer]

I'm not sure if this was my longest hike for a mark, but I'm pretty sure it was the most climbing for a mark. Also probably my favorite, for various reasons (e.g. see "native critter" pic on my log):

AA7647 SIER RESET

Here is a Topo and Profile. 7.8 miles round trip, 2788 feet climbing, and the same again back down.

[+89SC]

Now that's a cool benchmark picture! I'm glad we don't have those around here.

[+Holtie22]

OK, so I didn't walk to the top of 12250' Trout Peak, (this was back in 1983), but I did walk down off the mountain as we spent the rest of the day surveying an oil exploration line.

[foxtrot_xray]

50 feet.

 

Hah. Beat that.

[andylphoto]

Boy, now I feel like a benchmarking rookie. I think the longest and most challenging hike was for VULCAN. The hike was only about .75 miles as I recall, but mostly uphill on the way in. The last .3 miles was pretty thick saplings and raspberry brush, so slow going.

 

The longest manually powered trip I've done while benchmarking was on my mountain bike. I did more than benchmark, but searched for REPUBLIC 2 and IRON on this trip. Total mileage was about 7 miles, over gravel and up and down a pile of mine waste rock. I plan to go back again another day to confirm my suspicious about the demise of RK0572, IRON, then submit an NGS Not Found.

[southpawaz]

Funny you should ask... as I read this thread this morning, I was just getting ready for a 10 mile RT hike climbing 2400 feet to recover DU2193 OTERO, with no recovery notes since being monumented in 1946. I had previously done most of the hike (the easy part) for a cache, but left the climb for the benchmark another time. This one raised a couple questions but I'll read around before posting them (don't want to hijack the thread).

 

View of Bartlett Lake: