2010-03-28 global

Location

I didn't check the global hash until Danatar alerted me to the fact that it's in Idaho, only 800 km away from Vancouver across one international border. That's about ten hours drive, plus we need to ford a river and climb 700' in elevation up a steep mountainside.

Participants

• Robyn
• Wade
• Jim Van Sky

Planning

Planning personnel initially included Robyn, Wade and Rhonda. Knowing it was possible that the roads in the area were blocked by snow, as was discovered by intrepid geohasher David Souther last year about this time, we started research. The geohash is on top of a plateau near the town of St. Maries. Highway three gets to within hiking distance of the point, with a river to ford, and there are some logging roads that get very close (and up the hill), but as mentioned, they may have been blocked by snow this time of year. In the Google satellite view, the area is a cutblock, so it's probably all young trees and dense underbrush by now. We've spent hours in the past going a few hundred metres in terrain like that. Vancouver geohashers may be stupidly obsessed in pursuit of their goals, but they do learn from experience.

It's not that members of the Vancouver graticule hesitate to traverse 2009-12-30 49 -123, steep hills, 2009-04-08 49 -123 or other obstacles. It's just that the geohash was over eight hundred kilometres away, and the last hundred or so would be on some twisty local roads of unknown condition. And some geohashers need to get to work on Monday morning. Investigation of the local area and goading from other geohashers revealed that St. Maries has a small local airport. Not entirely seriously, just really to prove that we tried our hardest within the constraints, we checked into helicopter charter. There is no helicopter outfit out of St Maries, but Coeur d'Alene, about 50 kilometres away as the crow--or helicopter--flies, has a helicopter company called Big Country whose owner/dispatcher/pilot Jim Van Sky answers his phone promptly and doesn't say "you want to do what?" when presented with a set of lat long coordinates. He could take up to three people, totalling with their gear up to 600 lbs. And the price was about the same as an inflatable kayak. Robyn told him she'd discuss it with the group and get back to him.

Jim also told us that the snow level was above 4000', so we could have taken that information and realized that we could drive to the base of the hill on highway three and hike up. Xore said if Rhonda was going "he's not bloody well going to miss it," and both favoured the drive-and-hike approach, so Robyn called back the helicopter pilot and said they would not require his services. Rhonda then rolled a sanity check, and she must have a very high wisdom score indeed, because she successfully made the sanity check and was unable to justify the expedition to herself. That removed the condition that forced Xore to go, so it was back to Wade and Robyn.

They too could have hiked, but once the idea of taking a helicopter to a globalhash had been raised, it was hard to let go. In Wade's words, "I want to go for a helicopter ride." Coeur d'Alene is on I90, a major US highway, so it was guaranteed to be clear. Only driving as far as Coeur d'Alene instead of all the way to St. Maries would take four hours off the round trip, and not hiking up and down the hill an unknown amount, but possibly another four. It made the trip more possible. And way way cool. Hmm. Was this going to happen?

The weather had to permit the helicopter--and the tiny car--to make the trip. The forecast for Sunday morning was mostly cloudy in Coeur d'Alene, but the aviation weather assured us those clouds would be high above. We were not guaranteed able to land at the geohash. The pilot would have to approve the the site as safe, but at minimum we would achieve an airhash. Robyn packed for the trip while we thought about it. It was about 3:30 pm by the time planning and discussion was complete. Robyn called Jim back again and said we'd see him at 9:45 the next morning.

Expedition

Driving East

We're in Coeur d'Alene. We're fighting over Robyn's iPod and it's a pain to edit wiki pages. It was really fun driving down, but not as cool as the helicopter will be. Neener. -Wade 07:01, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Another Border Crossing

I have leg of lamb in the slow cooker. If you're back in vancouver about 8PM you're welcome to join us. -- Rhonda 17:29, 28 March 2010 (UTC)