[at-l] Elevation changes

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 09:32 PM 12/2/2003 -0500, Jim and/or Ginny Owen wrote:
>Jim Bullard
>>At 09:17 AM 12/2/2003 -0500, Jim and/or Ginny Owen wrote:
>>>The knobstacle - just north of Watauga dam walking along the road - the 
>>>trail took off to the left, climbed about 400' (seemed like 1000' at the 
>>>time) then came back down to the road --- 1/4 mile later, within sight 
>>>of where you'd started.  My partner wouldn't talk to me when we got back 
>>>to the road.  <G>
>>>
>>>Is that thing still there?
>>
>>You mean this one? http://www.jimbullard.org/Watauga.gif
>>So, how was the view from up there?
>>I know it's a sin of the highest order, but did you ever look at the maps 
>>and say to yourself "that's dumb. I'm not doing that."
>
>Jim -
>Yeah - if the blue/pink line is the present AT - except that just to the 
>left of the AT marker, in 92 the trail went up over the top along the 
>dotted line and then back down to the road.  But not on the blue loop to 
>the northwest of the knob.  About 200 vertical ft to the turnoff and 
>another 250 to the top.  Yep - that's what I remember.  No memory fault.  <G>
>Walk soflty,
>Jim

The blue/pink line is supposed to represent the trail but I can't vouch for 
it's accuracy. The map is from my Maptech AT program. I can't find any 
place where they tell the year for the trail data. The Terrain Navigator 
program was copyrighted in 2001. It is also used for CDs with maps of other 
areas and I believe (though don't know since Maptech is exceedingly lax 
about dating things) that it predated its use in the AT application. In 
fact the only other dates I could find were the date on the User Agreement 
which was Jan. 2003 and the USGS map that was the base for that section 
(1957). The trail in 1957 was different (see 
http://www.jimbullard.org/Watauga2.gif where I have highlighted in yellow 
the AT route as marked on the original map. This reroute seems to be the 
opposite of the notion that the trail should run on the ridge line since 
they seem to have moved the whole section on the left off the ridge.