Newbie Intro

[Rayman]

Hello everyone. I've been reading all the posts on the benchmarking boards for the past couple months and have learned a tremendous amount. With this knowledge I went out and recently found my first few marks. My only comment so far is that the survey disks are much smaller than I anticipated!! I guess I was expecting them to be like 5-6" in diameter.

 

I live in a very urban area, so many marks around me I suspect are gone due to new development. I'll still continue to search them out though and see what I can find. I'm sure I'll have questions over time, and hope that I won't be too much of a pain here. Thanks.

 

Ray

Buffalo, NY

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Rayman77 -

 

We welcome you to the hunt !

 

Since you've read the forum here, I'm sure you realize that questions provide the life here, not the pain.

 

There is a slight difference in disk size. 99% are the same size (I'm guessing 3.25") but there are one or two that I've seen that are larger, around 5" and I've seen one or two that are around 1" and a couple local (non-NGS) ones that are maybe a bit less than 1". So there you go, you've already brought up a new topic/question!

[+PFF]

Hi, Rayman77:

 

Let me add my welcome, also! I visited the logs for your finds and they look great. Good photo documentation, also. You are off to a great start!

 

The Reference Mark disk that you stumbled across can lead you to another nearby disk. The arrow on the disk points to the main station. A search on "nearby benchmarks" will bring up the data sheet. Finding the multi's can be a lot of fun. And, unlike geocaches, you can count each disk (if it has its own ID number).

 

Paul

[+seventhings]

Rayman77,

 

Welcome aboard.

 

Some of the Lewis and Clark commemorative disks are 12". A few of them (St Louis, Washington and St. Charles, MO, and Harper's Ferry, WV, have their own PIDs but are not in the Geocaching db because they were established in the NGS db after the Geocaching db was created.

 

Harper's Ferry = DF4764

St. Louis = DG7734

St. Charles, MO = DG7732

Washington, MO = DG7733

 

Will

[+Munin]

Welcome, Rayman77! I've also recently started benchmarking - I think it's a fun and interesting addition to caching. I wouldn't worry overly much about asking questions - I've posted a couple myself, and the folks here have been quite helpful in their replies.

[+BilboB]

Welcome to the club Rayman77. Over the past few years, I have learned quite a lot from the people here. I lurked for awhile, and then started posting and the answers to my questions were always well though-out and informative. I am a history buff and I love the hunt for an interesting mark and the "why here?" associated with it.

[ArtMan]

Speaking of history, I wonder if there are any Erie Canal-related marks in the Buffalo area. Most waterfront areas - if accessible - are rich lodes of bench marks. (Note two words, indicating the technical term for a mark used for elevation control.) Marks are set at bodies of water to provide, among other things, high quality information about water levels in the adjacent river, lake or ocean.

 

But hurry up! As I recall from my visits to nearby Rochester - and BTW, are there any historic marks associated with the orphan subway there? - you've only got a few more months of benchmarking weather before the snow sets it!

 

-ArtMan-

[Rayman]

Thanks everyone for the welcome!

 

ArtMan, contrary to popular belief, the Buffalo metro area doesn't get that much snow. Syracuse acutally gets much more than us, and Cleveland also had more than us this year. Just the other day we hit 86 degrees and it's only June!

 

Anyways, back to the topic(s), I imported the benchmark .gpx file from gc.com into USAPhotoMaps and noticed there are a huge amount of marks (mostly unfound for a long time) along the river. There are a couple along the canal, and I'm sure many more that aren't in the gc.com database. I spotted a US Army Corps of Engineers disk near where the canal meets the river that wasn't in the database. I've never seen any marks associated with our subway-to-nowhere. Of course I wasn't looking before, either.

 

OK here's my first question. What is a tidal benchmark? Is that associated with what you mentioned about water levels and whatnot? This is one of the marks I saw it on while perusing some marks near Niagara Falls.

 

Thanks again for the warm welcomes.

 

EDIT: Oh I forgot another question I had. What is a blaze? I assume it's some kind of marking on a tree?

Edited June 8, 2005 by Rayman77

[+Munin]

What is a blaze? I assume it's some kind of marking on a tree?

If surveying uses the same terminology as hiking/backpacking, then I'd say you're correct. If you've ever followed a trail that was marked by paint splotches (rectangles, circles, etc) on tree trunks, those splotches are more formally known as "blazes". (Blazes aren't limited to just trees, of course - I've seen plenty of trail blazes painted onto telephone poles when a trail follows along a section of road, or painted on boulders or even directly on the ground if passing over a section of rock outcrop, etc.) A much older method of blazing trails was to cut slashes/notches/etc into the tree trunks - not sure if that'll be relevant, but I'll mention it just in case.

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

This benchmark has a blazed tree to help locate the RM. The blaze has started to grow over and is a bit hard to see. It is a triangle in the top half of the one picture.

 

RIORDAN

 

 

 

Hope this help,

 

John

[ArtMan]

A photo of a different sort of blaze can be found at HV0598.

 

 

In this case the bark was removed to expose a triangular area, which was then painted orange. Blazes tend to be less obvious as the years go by, but they can certainly be visible for many decades.

 

-ArtMan-

[holograph]

And this is what they can look like after 60 years! Can you see the blazes?

 

 

 

Hint:

[+Red_Cedars]

And this is what they can look like after 60 years!

Actually after 60 years around these parts, they're more likely to look like this:

 

 

 

R_C