Unusual Marker

[ecampbell]

at least for me. We were hiking the maze of trails at Devious this morning when we came upon this.

39 44.821 74 38.350
http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=...16901499033&z=15&type=topo&gpx=NJPB1579593934

Any ideas?

 

[Gibby]

Army semaphore?

 

[gipsie]

Sending you a PM, Ed.

 

[ecampbell]

With Gipsie's permission.
That sign is part of the huge puzzle geocache "Choreographed Chaos". There are a bunch of them if you follow the bearing and heading. I believe it is true north, but I am not sure.
At one of the stages you had to follow the signs to get a password to the next puzzle. It was a very cool cache that took about a month to complete, but was archived last month.

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/...aos?guid=86903d5a-0e6a-432a-bf34-1360a33dc9df

 

[manumuskin]

I was just going to say that that was a bearing and a distance in feet.Actually sounds like more of a challenge that normal geocaching.

 

[ecampbell]

I was just going to say that that was a bearing and a distance in feet.Actually sounds like more of a challenge that normal geocaching.

Especially if your trying to walk a bearing through scrub and briars.

 

[Boyd]

This is why handheld GPSes have the "waypoint projection" feature.

 

[manumuskin]

Back when I had to hold a bearing to find Benchmarks before the days of GPS I would sight the bearing and then pick out a distant tree (sometimes in thick brush the distant tree might be thirty feet away) and then walk to the point and then back sight to where I was to make sure I'm still on the bearing. Working this way while time consuming would always pay off with pretty fair accuracy over long distances. You could wander around obstacles as long as you made it to your point before sighting again. I have read about doing pace counts to get around obstacles and to get back on bearing on the other side. That does not work in the Barrens. Have you ever tried to do a pace count while pushing through thick brush and briars?This is what makes the "navigate to" feature on GPS so great. You can wander at will searching for the easiest way through the gunk and still find your destination at the end of it.I always carry a compass even though I hardly ever use it anymore but I generally forget a map because I have topos on my gps. Actually I think the map is more crucial then the compass. There are many ways to determine direction but no way to guess at unfamiliar terrain. Problem with maps are I often end up in areas i didn't intend on going to when I left the house so I don't have a map printed for that area. I have printed and laminated every topo of the Barrens and I usually have the notebook full of them in the truck but I never grab the appropriate map when I get out.I do trust that GPS too much.

 

[Teegate]

Boyd,

I have always complained to manumuskin that the 528 feet limitation on my GPS was annoying, and after reading your post above I did some checking and realized the "Sight N Go" feature on my Oregon allows me to measure up to 9999.99 feet or 9999.99 miles. I could have used that many times.

 

[manumuskin]

My Magellan is no longer superior to Guy"s Garmin :-(. I thnk his has slightly better accuracy then mine but I could always nav to in feet from any distance up to a mile. He had to get within a tenth (528 ft) to nav in feet. I"m glad he can now do this. It is a real pain in thick brush to see your read out change only every 52.8 ft when your struggling for every step. It's nice to feel like your getting somewhere even when your really not.

 

[Boyd]

My Magellan is no longer superior to Guy"s Garmin :-(.

Didn't you say that you now have a Triton 1500? I also have one of those, and in fact it uses the SirRFStar chipset - the same as the 60csx that Guy thinks is superior. So maybe it's still superior to Guy's Oregon.

 

[manumuskin]

Yes I do have a 1500 and I have a serious problem with it actually two problems and cannot figure them out. One is the light that illuminates the screen will not go out unless i turn it off manually.I have set the settings to go off in 30 seconds but it does not work.I routinely forget to turn the light off and regularly run a couple pairs of batteries down each trip this way.Another problem is the flashlight comes on which is a couple of LED"s at the end of the unit.I don't know how I"m turning it on and the only way I can figure to turn it off is by rebooting the gps which turns it off. This also does not help my battery life. I downloaded the miserable manual to it and see nothing about either issue. A real pain to reboot in the woods and then wait for the signal to re pick up.Other then these two issues I really like it but till I figure this out it's hard on batteries.

 

[gipsie]

Al, I completed that cache and that was only one of about 120 stages and challenges that needed to be completed. It was very difficult! The GPSrs have come a long way, back then we actually had to follow our GPSrs because the technology just wasn't there or we just didn't know how to use it yet....

 

[MarkBNJ]

That's almost like an orienteering course.