One Mile an Hour

I set the GPS to record some stats while I field checked on Saturday. Five and a half miles of walking back and forth and up and down for five and a half hours - averaging about a mile an hour. It seems like I should have covered a large area it I walked for five and a half miles, but no - that's not the way that field checking works. Up the bottom of a reentrant, then down a little higher up, then up on the spur, then repeat in the next reentrant. Backtrack when I find a mistake. Wander about in the flat by the river, poking around in the tall cane, then try to sort out an old road that appears out of nowhere. So there is a lot of walking for a small amount of area covered.

I have proof that the river floods the park. Found lots of plastic trash congregating in this section. The river bank is two contours high (six meters), so that's a pretty good flood that can deposit trash that high. I mapped the closest approach of the river to the hills - only thirty meters. That's almost a cliff. South of that spot the hills retreat to a distance of 400 meters - that's a lot of flat land. That's where I started seeing the plastic that had washed down from Atlanta - not sure why it would start to appear there. Probably has something to do with the topography.

The riverside vegetation is thick in his area, which means that I spent quite a bit of time poking around. There is always a rise of land at the bank, followed by a depression and then another rise of land. All very subtle. Getting the contours straight is very important for an orienteering map. The small changes are what will make the map interesting.

Found the first spot where I could actually get down to the water. Usually the bank is so steep and muddy that the only way to get down is to fall. A small gully (which I mapped) gave me the opportunity to get down without getting covered in mud. The view upstream and downstream.

That's the last of the river pictures until I finish the rest of this page. Now I need to work my way south through some logged areas to the big powerline, while skirting the beaver pond. I'm curious to see how extensive the beaver swamp is.