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Jamaican Caving Notes |
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Cockpit Country Trail-finding May 3, 2007 - 08:00-15:30 EST Team: RS Stewart, IC Conolley Notes: RS Stewart Our little trek into the bush on May 3 accomplished two things: it supplied an easy, non-caving day for the start of the May 2007 expedition, and it advanced our knowledge of trails in the Cockpit Country that are currently forgotten and abandoned. First, the background: Several years ago, Ivor Conolley received an old US Army map of the Cockpit Country that includes trails that neither we, nor anyone else we know of, are familiar with (Forestry knows part of one). That is, trails other than the Troy Trail, The Quick Step Trail, the Heading Trail, etc. The map is decades old, and apparently based on aerial reconnaissance, but the marked trails are obviously not very accurate (no switchbacks or fine detail shown). We have no idea why the US Army produced the map in the first place, as there are no oil reserves, or strategic minerals in the Cockpit Country worth stealing. But nevertheless, it exists, and the first thing I did after Ivor supplied a jpg photo of it was use OziExplorer to reference it to WGS84. In 2006, I used it to find parts of the lost Heading-Pantrepant Trail, and during separate work done by the JCO the same year (establishing a circle route through Guthries, Bamboo Bottom, and back to Windsor), we found the start of another, one that runs north-south between the Troy Trail and the Heading-Pantrepant Trail. May 3, 2007, was my first opportunity to push it. Ives and I set out fairly early and made good time through Guthries. Not far past this is the start of the trail. (We're not supplying any specifics or GPS data for the time-being). At first, we curved to the southeast around a large hill on a well-constructed track which is comparable to the Troy trail (the entire section of trail we covered is very well built and would have been very capable of handling carts or gun-carriages). The route then headed south, with the track continuing to be easily spotted due to good canopy and an open forest floor. After about 30 min's of hiking, and not much cutlass-swinging, the track turned west and continued to run in that direction for about a kilometre. Here, a section of deadfall made it difficult for us to find the route on, but after some searching, we found the continuation of the track swinging south, contouring on the hillside away from what seemed to be the most inviting route, which led back north. After another 300m, we hit a saddle that led down into a very deep cockpit. Again, deadfall made it difficult to see which side of the cockpit the track continued on (damage from Hurricane Ivan seems to have been worse in the saddles than the cockpit bottoms, due to the wind being funneled). After some searching, with no definite results, we decided to pull the plug and return another day. The time was after noon, we had a hike of several hours ahead to get ourselves back out, and we wanted to check a branch we'd seen on the way in that looked as though it would connect to the Troy Trail. Accordingly, we flagged our farpoint well, and turned around. On the way back, we followed the branch noted above, and found that it indeed linked with the Troy Trail, and that it was also a well-constructed, very old trail. The actual point where it connects to the Troy Trail is in a cockpit, quite bushy, and difficult to see if you don't know where it is. We've walked past it often in the past and not spotted it. Now, it's flagged and we have GPS data. We should note that we believe there to be another branch that splits off where the trail swings west, which leads to the Troy Trail south of Devils Staircase. We must also note that the furthest point of the "new" trail might help with the logistics for the Cockpit Country Transect. We will eventually share the GPS data collected during the day (with a Garmin GPSmap76CSx and external antenna), but not yet. |
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