I planned to search out the unfound Packard benchmark and hide a cache. I found a cool spot with a good trail last time, Mt. Bavetta Van Dyke, and from the various trails I'd seen in this area, I kind of assumed this would be similar.
Well, we didn't find a trail, but the bushwhack was not too bad. It was 4/10 of a mile or so, but never extremely steep. We found spaces between the trees as we ascended through and around undergrowth. We finally arrived at an area of patchy scrub oak where the coords for the Packard benchmark pointed. We circled for 10 minutes, trompling through the scrub oak and sweeping away piles of leaves. I finally located Reference Mark 2.
I had generally thought the reference marks pointing to the obvious benchmarks 20 ft away were kind of silly and unnecessary, but I'm changing my tune now, at least when they position the benchmark like this one. The text on the benchmark page said it was 18.82 feet to the benchmark from Reference Mark 2. One of us stood at the reference and pointed along the arrow, while the other circled the scrub oak and tried to find the spot 18.8 feet away on that line.
After moving leaves and trampling some scrub oak, we found the end of a stake sticking 2 inches out of the ground. The benchmark text said "cemented in drill hole in solid bedrock 1.4 ft. beneath the surface of the ground." I had assumed that meant they had secured a little pole in the bedrock that deep just to keep it firm, and the benchmark would be sticking out on the pole, the same way they positioned the reference marks. Why would anyone leave an official marker that presumably needed to be read sometimes under the ground? But we could find nothing in the area besides this little stake.
Here's where my choice of hiking companion paid off today. We had already used his phone to look up how far apart the two marks were, and now he was gung ho to dig for the benchmark. The stake came out with a light pull, and there were a lot of rocks right under the surface that came out fairly easily, but we had to dig with sticks. I confess that I would have given up after a few moments. My motivated buddy kept digging until he hit something hard, directly underneath the stake we found.
He found it! We dug a small hole out and used water to wash it off as best we could. Why in the world would you bury a benchmark?! Do they measure the elevation from the real ground level, or 1.4 ft beneath the ground where the mark was positioned? Did they have to uncover it each time they used it for something? Why not cement in a pole and leave it above ground so it's actually useful like they did the reference marks? Was this common? So many questions...
Anyway, we reveled in our triumph on this random, brushy mountain and took some pictures. We filled in the hole with the rocks and put the stake in. It should be easy to uncover it again for future finders. Please put the rocks and stake back when you are done. The cache is hidden nearby. Life is good and weird on a mountain surveyed by inefficient cartographers.
