My car needs at least an oil manifold and timing chain gasket. I think I might be able to have them in in the next few days. I have a low profile jack coming that strong enough to lift the motorhome if needed on Wednesday from Indianapolis.
Here's a couple things that we have coming up... Adventurer's Project needs to get new trail adopters in the Marietta Unit of The Wayne (National Forest). AP Facebook page is starting to get more participation and the audience, like all Facebook audiences are media hungry. In order to do a better job at volunteer procurement, be it on the Facebook page, or otherwise is to produce what I call a "Vacant Segment Showcase." I've been involved here for about 4 years. During the first two, I kept my nose out of the Road Fork Section for the most part. I was usually too busy to take any pictures on maintenance. And I was hesitant to start this showcase before because I wanted the photos to be under green foliage. But I think that I'm going to override that and get them going sooner than later anyways?
Another thing is somebody in the region once tied to make a correlation between the area's flood and certain other sites in the area to determine when they'll flood from a computer. I believe that their intentions were good, but I think that I have better method? This involves using a car, smartphone, coming in and out of cellular data signal and monitoring the sties in person before and during flood conditions.
The ones that I want to test are:
- the gauge at Macksburg of Washington County, Ohio vs the conditions of the ODNR concrete ford near Whipple 15 (10/2010 map).
- the gauge at Macksburg and south of Whipple (community of) verses the conditions at Whipple 13 (10/2010 map)
- the guage at Bloomfield verses the conditions near Road Fork Section - Point 21 (7/2011 map)/ Ring Mill Campground/ Walter Ring House and Mill Site and between Whipple 05 - 06, which for the latter, would require hiking about 1.5mi beyond the treeline to access the east side of the Little Muskingum River Flats, which the trail there is lower in elevation.
This will entail hundreds of miles of driving as I'd be going from site to site in large circles encompassing all of the Road Fork Section and 1/2 of the Whipple Section. It's going to be back and forth for hours on end between these sites.
This can't be planned and I have to be ready to go on a moments notice. There may also be a question along Wolf Run. That waterway is dammed just north of the Road Fork Section, but there question may be about the effect of the nearby West Branch Duck Creek as it could back feed and flood Wolf Run onto the near by road that the Road Fork Section is routed on? Such a flood would have to also flow over a 50 yard wide grass strip between the run and the road.
Could locations on the Northwest Tier of the Whipple Section flood? Perhaps. Whipple 20 - 21 would be the most susceptible. But these are the kind of streams and fingers the feed flood waters into larger ones. And doing this would have to use flood gauges on the Muskingum River, which are at much lower elevation and could be much less reliable?
What this data could do can be divided into those with smartphones and those without. For those with, they could hike into cellular signal, log on to Adventurer's Project's website. With the bit of research that I can do, I may be able to tell them when sites on the trail are flooded based upon the levels of the nearby gauges. For those without, my visual observations may be able to determine what the waterway's height, or width would have to be in order to flood a nearby portion of trail?
The Whipple Section has a Dry Boot Bypass written into it's map. It's unmarked, but it's there because if the concrete ford near Whipple 15 is flooded, it's illegal to cross it. I've heard of the Duck Creek sweeping four wheel drive vehicles into the creek there. The problem is in the counter clockwise direction. There's no problem with the clockwise direction because the ford is immediately after Whipple 15. You can see if the creek is flooding the ford without making the turn on to the next road. But the counter clockwise traffic has to hike over 2 miles from the intersection with the Dry Boot Bypass before they see it.
Whipple 13 can be under water where it's right next to the Duck Creek. If it's under water, a high ground by-pass would have to be devised. Considering that I've seen one of the local highways nearby flood, I'm not sure that this could be done. It could be a logistical problem with overnight amenities? And in that case, we may have enough information to tell the hiker to take a zero day (a day off) and wait for it to recede?
No comments:
Post a Comment