#2: [16-Aug-03]

07-Sep-2001 -- This confluence is a beautiful location in the Lolo National Forest. Forest Road 388 comes very close to this confluence and I thought I might have a good chance of reaching the confluence.

I had three choices from Forest Road 388 as the road makes a semi-circle, thus crossing both latitude and longitude lines desired;

1. walk straight off the road cross country and at a slight angle until I came to the confluence.
2. walk the road until I crossed the longitudinal line, then cross country to the confluence.
3. walk the road, ignoring the desired longitudinal line and as the road curved, note when crossing the latitudinal line, then cross country to the confluence.

The density of both forest underbrush and canopy varies widely throughout the forest. This was not in my favor. The choices were virtually impossible, due to heavy underbrush and extremely steep terrain. Even the forest canopy was extremely dense. I could not get a position, readily.

After trying 'a', 'b', and 'c', I opted for 'b'. At least the road interrupted the forest canopy enough so that I could get two satellites and after awhile I was able to attract a 3rd, which gave me an altitude reading as well.

So at 4:50pm, Mountain Daylight Saving Time, UTC -6, I took my photos of the best approach I could find to the confluence. It was an overcast day so the photos didn't come out as well as hoped. I did not take a photo looking south, as there was nothing but brush and trees ten feet away in that direction.

In road travel up to the area of confluence, I passed through some burned areas, a reminder of how hard hit Montana was by fires in the summer of 2000. I took a picture of one burned area. The website below refers to those fires on the Lolo National Forest.

http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/lolo/fire-info/fire.html