2019-01-26 42 -85

Sat 26 Jan 2019 in 42,-85: 42.8903382, -85.7362038 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

woods on Spartan Industrial Drive between Hascall Steel and Woodale Self Storage, north of 44th St., Grandville, MI, USA

Participants

• Mcbaneg (talk) (George)

Plans

This looks easily accessible. I will try coming by tomorrow after I finish interviewing students on campus. I expect to be there around 4 pm or slightly before.

It will be cold and there will be snow on the ground.

Expedition

More or less as expected. I had to walk down a brushy bank for several meters before reaching the flat floor of a little swale. Sparse underbrush and the occasional tree were sticking up through the snow but the way was quite clear. I was quickly within a few meters of the hashpoint. As I wandered around trying to get closer, I distinctly heard and felt the cracking of a big sheet of ice underfoot. Uh-oh; was I walking on a recently-frozen pond? It couldn't be too deep since ordinary woody plants were growing out of it. I proceeded gingerly, wincing when I heard cracks. The sheets that seemed to be breaking were something like a meter across, though I couldn't see the ice itself because of the snow cover.

The GPS tended to lose lock under the trees, and at one point I retreated to the bank because it was claiming I was more than 100m from the hashpoint. Going back to the road cleared its mind and demonstrated I had been in the right place after all, and I returned to the hashpoint to continue the dance.

I actually wondered whether I might be earning a Walking on water achievement but the rules there indicate that if you could have waded to the hashpoint you haven't earned it. I don't actually know whether there was liquid water under the ice I was walking on, but if there was it was probably only a few mm deep. More likely I was walking on weak ice over mud.

This geohash was quite close to 2016-09-20 42 -85.

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  Proof

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  Grin

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  Hashdance tracks

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  view N from hashpoint toward self-storage units

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  view NE toward hashpoint from roadbank

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  Temperature record from Timberlane Pond station, KMIWYOMI15, just NE of hashpoint at 42.892 -85.734

Achievements

Mcbaneg (George) earned the Frozen Geohash Achievement by reaching the (42, -85) geohash on 2019-01-26 while the temperature was 17 °F.