Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Cheating the Adventure?

My last post described my hike to find a suitable route to tackle the Superstition Ridgeline hike. In the interim I purchased a new GPS unit, my report on a New Shiny Thing will be forthcoming. But it has been a pleasant frustration to learn how to use my new toy. I spent a full day of my vacation tooling with the map software and learning the patterns of the control.

I sat here knowing that someone, somewhere had to have run a GPS over this trail and logged their way points online. Not having a clue as to how to find that sort of information I crunched the keyboard, for hours today. After my first beer went warm and my eyes started to hurt, I struck gold. (Somewhat of a pun as the route is in Lost Dutchman State Park)

I now have the exact coordinates to find my through they myraid of trails and drop offs, cliff faces and nameless peaks. Plus I am able to do the same with every trail in the Superstitions. Just as sarcasm is dificult to project in writing, (god knows I try), its almost as hard to express the feeling of utter success. I could not have expected such a treasure trove of information.

Having this information may be akin to cheating on a test, or having the FAQ to a difficult video game, or knowing how a movie ends, but I don't care. To me it is more like a treasure map with clues to X marks the spot.

I still have to go out there and recon my way points. Fine tune the difference between a digital map and my boots. I still have to do a hike that is akin to hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim. How fun is that!



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