Township & Range (or...A long way from Dog Pound!) Mystery Cache

The cache is located northwest of the small hamlet of Madden (for reference, Madden is about 8 kilometers southeast of Dogpound).  Not much in Madden except a beautiful golf course and RV/Camping.  There is also a community hall and a few houses...Just west of Madden is the Alberta Institute For Wildlife Conservation (AIWC) dedicated to admitting injured and orphaned wildlife

The cache is a nano and should be winter friendly...Have fun!

The cache is not at the posted coordinates!

Geocachers deal with many coordinate systems.  The most common one is latitude and longitude, which measure degrees in a north/south (latitude) and east/west (longitude) direction.   Others include the UTM system (Universal Transverse Mercator), which measure meters in the north/south direction (y) and in the east/west direction (x), and the NTS (National Topographic System), which is based on latitude and longitude and counts south to north and east to west across Canada (our topography maps are in this system).

The key to this cache is another system called the DLS (Dominion Land Survey) or in Alberta, the Alberta Township System (ATS).  The townships measure the  north/south position and the ranges  measure the east/west position.  Townships and Ranges are every six miles (or  9.7 km). There are smaller sub-divisions to increase the accuracy, such as sections (1 mile X 1 mile)  and legal sub divisions (LSD’s – 0.25 miles X 0.25 miles).  In Alberta, the Township System has 126 townships that start at the Canada/US border (Twp. 001) and go north to the Alberta/NWT border, ending at Twp. 126.  The ranges in Alberta are counted from meridian lines (the Fourth Meridian being the Alberta/Saskatchewan border, the Fifth Meridian running through Calgary and Stony Plain and the Sixth Meridian running east of Grande Prairie and near Revelstoke, BC).  Ranges count up to 30 between meridian lines, and reset at the start of each meridian.  Due to convergence, the further north, the fewer the ranges between meridians.  For a map showing the ATS system, click on the related web page link. Many rural roads are named using this system i.e. Twp. Road 282 or Range Road 31 (The Twp. Road would be located in Twp. 28 +2 miles and runs east/west, the Range Road would be located in Rge. 3 +1mile and runs north/south – note, the meridian is not listed, but near the cache it would be the 5^th meridian).

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To solve this puzzle, you must decipher the following:

Township Direction =  qpsisgwtwpsxamtqsdsusfrfahglemaxsaipqmsusfgfsfafsmax

Range Direction = tdenrndeyfsrtejevelulfbmqkbfvesevelzeqmtwmsevellflelfle