Progress so far

A new progress map. This one includes McIntosh Reserve across the river for comparison.

From Chattahoochee Bend

East Map Complete

From Chattahoochee Bend

Spring is here - those are the first mayapples. And I have finished the east map just in time, because I picked off the first tick. Here are the stats:

20 field checking trips
129 hours 45 minutes field checking
37 hours 15 minutes drafting
167 hours total for 2.9 sq km is 57 hours 35 minutes per sq km.

That's slower than the north map, which averaged 47 hours 48 minutes per sq km, probably because of all the bare rock and the boulders.

Total project time so far is over 400 hours with 1920 miles traveled.

Boulder count: 936, not counting the "rocky ground" symbol.

The most prominent features of the east map are the bare rock and boulders, although the topography is interesting and confusing. It should be a big challenge for the orienteer.

The west map is next, and it is the biggest of the three. If I look at only the field checking, and take an average time, it will probably take 208 hours. I average 6.5 hours per trip, so that's 32 trips. With luck, I may finish by March 2011 - another year, which is about on par with the time it took me to do my last big map - Smithgall Woods/Dukes Creek, which took two years.

I'm going to take some time off now - my left knee is suffering from overuse.

East map - not done yet

The week of mapping is over, and I did not finish the east map. The area across the creek turned out to be more complex and subtle than I thought. Good news for orienteers, bad news for the mapper. I spent two days trying to sort out the details of self-similar saddles, hills, and reentrants. Am I in this saddle or that one? Which hill is this again? And there are plenty of old roads that all seem to be going the same way. Not good when the mapper is confused. So I will need at least one more day, maybe two to finish up the east map.

Old Cemetery

I've probably mapped about 2000 acres of the park now (only a thousand more to go), but today I found the first cemetery. It is way out on the east map, on the other side of the creek, high on a hill. Not very far from the southeast boundary, but difficult to get to. It looks very similar to the graves at McIntosh Reserve, another of the GAOC orienteering maps, which is just across the border from Chattahoochee Bend.

There are four graves, marked by rock slabs above ground:

From Chattahoochee Bend

From Chattahoochee Bend

The largest one is open on the end - you can see inside:

From Chattahoochee Bend

But sorry, no bones:

From Chattahoochee Bend

A Week of Mapping

Took a week off from the real job to attempt to get as much done on the east map as possible before the leaves come out. Once spring arrives, mapping slows down because of the reduced visibility.

It's been an exhausting week, and it's not over yet. Let's see if I can remember what has happened so far!

Saturday 3/13/10: Finished the eastern side of the big ridge of rocks. For some reason, most of the boulders are on the west side of the ridges. On the eastern side, there are more bare rock areas, some of them ending in cliffs.

From Chattahoochee Bend

Sunday 3/14/10: Went orienteering at Joe Kurz!

Monday 3/15/10: There's a large shallow reentrant east of the big ridge that's about 400x600 meters. It's pine, logged at some point in the distant past, terraced by some poor farmer (or slaves?). Visibility is poor, but it's not green. Naturally I saved that reentrant for later in the week. I extended the big creek all the way out to the northeast corner of the map. Measuring all the twists and turns, it's 2.1 km. Straight line, it's only 1.5km. It gets bigger and bigger the further northeast it flows.

From Chattahoochee Bend

Tuesday 3/16/10: Time to finally fill in the big shallow reentrant. Not an easy task. There is an old logging road that is barely visible that circles through the reentrant without actually going anywhere. It leaves almost no trace on the forest floor, so it doesn't show up on the lidar contours, yet is is easily visible to an orienteer. So I spent considerable time trying to get it accurately located. After that, everything went smoothly. Here's an example photo of what the road looks like, as it is crossing a small bare rock area:

From Chattahoochee Bend

Wednesday 3/17/10: There's a knob of map that extends north of the big power line on the east map, about 550x800 meters, although part of it is only 250 meters wide. It's plenty big enough for running into and out of. And it is jam packed with rocks. This was the day that it rained, so I spent half a day running up the western boundary before the wet drove me off.

Thursday 3/18/10: Volunteered with the GATC north of Neels Gap for the alternate spring break program - I am on vacation after all.

Friday 3/19/10: A very long day. Finished the knob of map. Lots and lots of boulders up here, but the pattern of big rocks on the west of the ridge and bare rock on the east continued. Here's a big hill of boulders:

From Chattahoochee Bend

And here's some bare rock:

From Chattahoochee Bend

Saturday 3/20/10: I'm taking the day off from field checking. Lots and lots of drafting to catch up on. I've mapped everything north of the big creek. I still have two days left of vacation (Monday is off too). Can I finish everything south of the creek in two days? Stay tuned.

The Big Creek

All the big geological features in this section of the map run southwest to northeast, so it's no surprise that the big creek runs - southwest to northeast. I don't know where this creek begins, because it does not cross any of the roads south of the map. It's pretty big for having such a short run. It crosses the road on the northeast corner of the map on it's way to the river. How big is it?

From Chattahoochee Bend

Not as big as the creeks at Cochran Mill. More the size of the creek at Pickett's Mill. There won't be any problem crossing it during normal water levels - although you will get your feet wet. Here's where one of the old roads fords the creek:

From Chattahoochee Bend

My plan is to finish everything north of the creek before crossing it and mapping the other side. At one spot there is a very nice beaver swamp and impressive dam:

From Chattahoochee Bend

That's the dam in that photo bending across. I thought maybe I would get a break from the boulders down in this section, but it's not to be. There are some huge rock gardens that are awaiting mapping:

From Chattahoochee Bend

From Chattahoochee Bend