Need Help with Old PID's

[+Rumpled]

On a hike not so long ago, I was suprised that Mt San Antonio (aka Baldy) didn't have a survey marker show up in the county lists downloaded from USGS. It's the highpoint of LA County, CA and on the border of San Bernardino County as well. I checked both counties.

 

Recently, another hiker reported this find

 

 

Not a Tri Mark and about the size of a quarter.

 

In a thread here

 

Mt Baldy 09-21-08

 

They also referenced this link

County High Points

 

which listed a PID EV3735 for the peak.

 

I searched USGS for this PID and bracketed it from 3730-9 to see if there might be others; using destroyed as an option also. I also searched by the quad Mount San Antonio 1988 to see if there were other likely suspects.

 

EV3735 seemed the only real one with 34 and 36 being a short distance away. They (34 &36) seem to be on West Baldy. When I hiked there, I saw no markers - though I didn't search well as I thought there were none.

 

The datasheet has this

 

>EV3734 PEAK 11 SAN ANTONIO MOUNTAIN 34 17 13.4/117 39 15.4 3 D

>EV3734 PEAK 11 SAN ANTONIO MOUNTAIN 34 17 13.4/117 39 15.4 3 NN

>EV3735 OLD BALDY PEAK CAIRN 34 17 21.0/117 38 46.9 3 D

>EV3735 OLD BALDY PEAK CAIRN 34 17 21.0/117 38 46.9 3 NN

>EV3736 OLD BALDY SOUTHWEST PEAK 34 17 12.3/117 39 15.6 3 D

>EV3736 OLD BALDY SOUTHWEST PEAK 34 17 12.3/117 39 15.6 3 NN

 

With the D and NN representing "No Descriptive Text available" for Horiz and "No geodetic control at this mark" for Vert and Horiz

 

Looks like they are order 3 or 4?

 

From the limited description for EV3735, I would think no marker?; just a cairn?

 

Topo maps themselves seem to show Tri stations on both Baldy "Old Baldy 2 10064" and "West Baldy 9898"

 

As shown by my link here

 

Baldy Acme Mapper

 

Is it possible to get further info to solve this dilemma of whether or not this peak has a marker that's published?

[+Shorelander]

First off, let me note that the agency you're searching is not the USGS but the NGS - the former is in the Dept of the Interior and is pretty much out of the survey marker business, and the latter is in the Dept of Commerce and is very much in the survey marker business.

 

Next, I'm sure other people here will correct me, but the peak seems to have no marks that are publishable on it. The "no descriptive text" error isn't that big of a deal*; it's the lack of geodetic control that is the problem. There's no physical marker whose coordinates have been obtained that can be trusted not to have moved at the site. That being said, I didn't get the NN error when I looked at the datasheet, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

 

That being said, this is a very limited perspective. Just because the NGS database doesn't have a published mark on the mountains doesn't mean there is no mark there. Any one of countless agencies could have placed a mark there and not have logged it in the database. Since there are tri-stations on the USGS topos, you could write to the USGS and ask them for the survey marks for the relevant quad and see what was there. But remember, a survey mark isn't going to always be a disk. It can be a drill hole, a chiseled square, a cairn, a pole, a buried bottle, a buried copper triangle - anything.

 

*Of course, it's only not a big deal if you can be reasonably sure the mark is the mark on name alone. Cairns and peaks are things I wouldn't trust to have not changed over 100 years or so.

[+Klemmer]

Hi Rumpled:

Just a quick note: I've been up there several times myself, the most recent about 3 years ago. I have gone through a similar process that you are. You are doing the right stuff, asking the right questions, looking in the right places. I came to the conclusion that there were no current NGS published marks on Baldy (San Antonio Mountain). I also couldn't get the NGS database to spit out anything useful about destroyed marks. However, this group (and I suppose even me) are smarter now than we used to be. So keep digging! I will see what I can come up with tonight, and maybe (?) I can find my work from 3 years ago.

 

I didn't make it over to West Baldy. Maybe this fall.....