2014-03-05 35 -82

Location

A wooded hillside in Marion, NC, USA

Participants

Mcbaneg (talk) (George)
Sylvia

Expedition

This is a take-Mom-geohashing-while-visiting-her-over-spring-break geohash.

We were planning to go out for a hike today but hadn't decided on a spot. The hashpoint looked accessible, and it was close to Mount Mitchell State Park which would offer good hiking opportunities, so we decided to tack a geohashing expedition on the front of our day's outing. We borrowed a handheld GPS since it seemed unlikely we would have sufficiently clear views to use a no-batteries triangulation approach.

We were able to park at an RV dealership just south of the hill, and walk through a field and along an old woods road that ran along the ridge of the hill to within a few dozen meters of the hashpoint. At that point we had to go off-trail down the north slope. The wooded hillside had a thick underbrush of mountain laurel, rhododendron, and greenbriar, and it took a few tries and a short excursion to the east to find a penetrable route that would let us get far enough down the slope. Once we reached the correct latitude we were fortunate to find a deer trail that led back west toward the hashpoint.

The hashpoint lay in a rhododendron thicket. A little ducking under branches got us to within what appeared to be the device error; for a short period the GPS location was on the money to the full 5 decimal places displayed, but by the time I got a picture it had drifted away slightly. We took pics but left no marker since it seemed unlikely there would be subsequent geohashers. We worked our way back to the ridgetop and back to the car without incident.

Unfortunately the state park was nearly inaccessible because of road construction, and our Plan B for hiking in a nearby state recreation area was closed, so we abandoned the hiking plan and returned home with the successful geohash as the highlight of the afternoon. We'll try again.

View to south.
View to north.
View to east.
View to west.
Proof (though not as convincing as it had been a few seconds earlier.) Targets are 35.69044 and -82.06483.
Grin on Sylvia.
Grin on George.