ELEPHANT

I was so excited to have the opportunity to search for a tri-station called ELEPHANT! It was on our route to Nockamixon State Park this morning, where we planned to hike and explore before attending the annual showing of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour in the evening. ELEPHANT refers to, according to the NGS datasheet and the USGS topo map, a local name for the crossroads near the mark (the roads are Elephant Road and North Ridge Road). I expected this to be a pretty easy find, and the station mark was indeed a pretty simple find. The coordinates took me directly to it, as expected, and the monument projects several inches, enough for it to be visible from a distance. It is right at the edge of a cultivated field, which may account for the damage to the monument. The disk itself appears to be in good shape, but the monument seems to have been hit and is sloping slightly, and some of the concrete has been knocked off.

I had no luck finding the reference marks. Even though they, too, are supposed to be right along the edge of the cultivated field where it borders the empty lot, and in similar monuments projecting several inches, I couldn’t find any sign of them. The area was very muddy today and overgrown with thorns (both last year’s and this year’s growth) so maneuvering was challenging, but I had a relatively clear view of the area and could not see any sign of the monuments or marks.

We were also unable to find any sign of the azimuth mark, which should have been about a third of a mile southwest of the station along North Ridge Road. The reference objects are no longer in place (or have been renumbered) but our projected coordinates brought us to the spot, where we found nothing other than a strip of grass along the road shoulder, and a horse pasture beyond.