Isle Royale Forums

Donk_67 wrote:gps or compass for that matter on a smart phone won't work without a cell signal to ping off of for location making them worthless in a wilderness situation.

Indeed, many or even most smart phone mapping apps are useless without a cell connection (or more exactly, an internet connection).

I would never recommend using a smart phone for primary wilderness navigation but if your phone has built in true GPS hardware (as most smart phones do) and enough memory, then it can be made to work. Battery life and recharging difficulty makes it my last choice for those reasons alone, but there are mapping apps that are not at all dependent upon cell service. Google maps as well as most navigation apps do indeed require internet service to access any mapping but the required maps can pre-loaded via download or plugin memory ahead of time for use with apps specifically designed for GPS only use. If you are planning to carry a GPS capable smart phone anyway, it can be made ready for use as a backup navigation system.

Well i just ordered a stack of 7.5 minute quad maps from usgs. I love a good map! So it looks like its gps, OLD SCHOOL!!!!! only 8 bucks a pop. Put em together and you get an island almost 4' by 12'........ looks like new wallpaper dear! when we settle on a gps I will have lots of room to plot trips. Thanks for the pointers!

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Quick thought, all of the reading i have done here i haven't seen much mention of geocacheing.do people do this on the island, or is it discouraged?

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No geocaching is allowed on the island (more directly) none are allowed to be placed on the island. There is, or was a virtual (meaning no container) cache on the island that was placed there by Lost Scouts.

Andy

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I kinda didn't think placing items would be allowed.My interpretation would find it as liter, guess that is what they think also. A virtual cache, they must be some real ahhhhaa type places?still sounds like fun!

BucketBob turned me on to hunting down the various survey markers that can be found on the Island. It's a small brass disk, often surrounded by a cairn of sorts and 'now' most are in the middle of nowhere. It's sort of a version of geocaching, and a great reason to get off trail with purpose!

Yes I have seen these in my travels.I stumbled across one last year on the island, and another in the porkies.survey marks would be fun to hunt for.cool suggestion!

I found one the other day...but not on Isle Royale.

Maccu pichu....nice. it is the only place i can say i would like to see that is out of the country.....trip report?

where do you go to figure out where these might be? Could be a cool side trip if there are any in the area we will be. Last year's trip to the Smokies we found and reported corodanates of 5 of them (one wasnt a very usefull find, the designation numbers were wore off)

Lucky Chicken wrote:where do you go to figure out where these might be?

If you look on a Topo map, like NatGeo, you will see various elevation numbers printed with a little X or triangle. (Like the triangle on the picture Fonix uploaded.)
I can't say for the Xs, but the triangles are the triangulation points, and many of the markers still exist.

Tom, this is a cool topic. I feel so proud when I stumble on them. I had to look this up the National Geodetic Survey has a data base for them, apperantly there are multiple types. brass markers are the tip of the iceberg I guess.I was going to post the link to the ngs website but........I am a little technology challenged( newbies! )

Lucky Chicken wrote:where do you go to figure out where these might be?

Geocaching dot com has several of them listed if your already on that site. They pull them from the NGS (National Geodetic Survey) which has a larger amount. I'd start with one of those two places. I've never played with locating them but I'd think there are likely lots of them from back in the days of mining and early days of the park. Hope that helps you get started. Happy hunting. Andy

On the older map" 95" it shows benchmarks on siskiwit and sugar mt....the new one shows the. X not the triangle....the older map seems to have so much more info .

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I have been pouring over the usgs 7.5 minute topo' s that I ordered. .these show those benchmarks, they are everywhere! Just in the three maps That I ordered there are probably a dozen of them.going to see if we can locate a few without gps.........still shopping:???:

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