#4: [12-Jun-14]

#3: [14-Oct-02]

#2: [04-Apr-02] (incomplete)

27-Mar-2001 -- Another experience where I bush-whacked for a while before finding a road that passed within one hundred meters of the confluence. This time I backtracked the road and discovered my truck sitting in it -- well, stuck in it. Anyone wishing to visit this confluence, though, should probably not use this particular road. It's soft in wet weather, it's been plowed over in at least three places, making it difficult to trace, and it's likely to be covered with crops in dry weather. It's probably an abandoned mining road. Kohier Road, which passes within a mile to the northwest, is probably a better choice.

Located 175 meters north of the Utah-Idaho border, 42N, 112W is another of the many surveying gaffs found throughout the west, where state lines were intended to lie along lines of latitude and longitude but didn't. After the fact, it was decided to go with the lines on the ground and ignore the intent and the facts. This attitude underlies much Utah legislation to this day. (For another surveying error, see 41N 111W.)

I had a nice day for the task: cool, sunny, and wind-less. I left the truck around 12:30 p.m., heading south along the road that seemed to be following the edge of a plowed field. When I came to what seemed to be the end of the road, the confluence was south and some west, uphill in both directions. I started up the slope, trying to keep on course but having to make concessions to gravity and my physical condition.

At 1:19 p.m. (according to my GPS trace), I found a road, made my way to it, and followed it, checking the GPS as I went along. At 1:34, the confluence lay due west of the road, straight down the slope. I made my way cautiously and by 1:38 I had arrived.

I took the usual pictures with my new digital camera, but when I got home, I discovered that the shot of the GPS indicating the confluence and sitting on the ground hadn't worked out somehow. But the south view is belly-to-belly with the slope, so it's showing a spot within five feet of the confluence -- four of it vertical.

(I have an Agfa CL30 Clik!, which records the images on an internal disk-drive, so I may have turned the camera off before it had a chance to finish the write. I've made this mistake before.)

I decided to work my way back to the road and follow it until I could see the truck or I reached the bottom of the gulch to the left. After less than 500 meters, the road vanished into section of plowed hillside. Looking west, I could see some abandoned machinery in a natural saddle and a bit of road, so I made way to it. From that point, I could see Kohier Road off to the north-west.

The road wound around the machinery and down a slope to the remains of a gate. Again, the road was plowed under. I followed it as best I could across the plowed ground until I came to the road at the edge of the field where I'd left my truck.

Except that there were three or four other places where the truck would have got stuck and that I would have had to known where the road went when it was plowed under, I could have driven almost to the confluence. If I'd tried, I'd still be there, waiting for dry weather or for a tractor to come along and pull me out.