This geocache is dedicated to my mother who taught me how to calculate square roots by hand as a child.
FTF gets a rock from the top of Mount Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental 48 states. Special thanks to my brother who summited Mount Whitney back in 2022.
The posted coordinates are not the real coordinates of this cache. The real coordinates of this cache are.
N AB CD.EFG W HJK LM.NPQ
To find the latitude of this cache, write out the square root of 3 = 1.73205080... P0=1; P1=7; P2=3 etc.
In general, PX is the digit at position X of the square root of 3.
A=P2; B=P1; C=P3; D=P68; E=P500187; F=P325001; G=P263263
To find the longitude, I introduce no carry addition. No carry addition works like regular addition except there is no carrying
4125 + 8192 = 2217
Next, find the position of the beginning of the first group of 9 consecutive 9's within the square root of 12. Positions work as they did in the latitude puzzle.
Let the last 4 digits of this positioin be WXYZ
WXYZ + 6581 = HKMP
Finally, find the position of the beginning of the first group of 200,000 digits in the square root of 2 that add up to exactly 900,000.
Let the last 4 digits of this position be STUV
STUV + 8291 = JLNQ