nancy rhodes creek knight's tour

What: a map-based scavenger hunt.

Where: S/F at Pump Station TH.

Who: anyone, results at bottom of post.

When: April 11th to May 1st.

Why: explore a cool place using a map.

How: details provided in this post.

Click here for Livelox

You will want to be somewhat familiar with chess, the knight's tour and how to read a map before undertaking this adventure. You will travel 5 miles, much of it will be off-trail and through the woods on unlevel surfaces. GPS will be of little assistance. Instead, you will use the following map provided for this tour: https://caltopo.com/p/5SAUB.

Print this map preferably in color. Bring it with you along with some water and snacks. You should bring a compass and writing utensil as well. Expect this outing to take a few hours. It may even take multiple outings. There's a detailed legend on the map for orienteering symbols. The final move brings you to a gift card hidden under a rock for a local Durham restaurant.

At all but the final checkpoint (CP), you are looking for a 3x5cm yellow tag with printed "chess coordinates" for next CP on a tree, branch, stump, or ground (see update below). There are 25 CPs within a 400m² 5x5 "chess board." One is in each of the 80m squares. You are solving a "knight's tour" by visiting each CP exactly once in the L-shaped movement pattern of a knight chess piece. 

4/17 update: I checked several CPs. The final is intact, 2 of 7 yellow tags visited were lying on the ground at their location and the twine I used to attach them nowhere to be seen. I suspect that birds have found a use for it. If you can't find a CP, check the ground. Tags are protected from water by packaging tape, but might wash, or blow away if detached in a storm. See 4/23 update below.

 

Photo of CP (left) and gift card (right)

Refer to the map linked above to make use of these chess coordinates, which are (mostly) given as four digits: a capitalized letter, a number, a lower-case letter and a number. The first capitalized letter and number show which 80m square that CP is located. The lower-case letter and last number refine the location in that square to 10m. Coordinates for the first CP are A5c6.

Follow the tour carefully and keep track of squares you've visited. After halfway, coordinates at some of the CPs are given only as two digits: the lower-case letter and last number. A knight who has stayed true to the tour would know the correct 80m square to visit at this point. In other words, don't shoot yourself in the foot by shortcutting either intentionally or unintentionally!

4/23 update: on an evening jog through the course, I checked some random CPs and couldn't find the A4 CP. I'm unsure if this one got blown away or picked up on an Earth Day mission, but here are coordinates to next CP in case you've made it this far and get stuck: C3g5. Note that this is over halfway and remaining CPs are only given as two digits! See Final hint below.

If/when you find the gift card, feel free to take it! Please re-hide the clear plastic sleeve the card is in where you found it. Note that there's a QR code taped to this sleeve. Please use the link to log a name/comment, which will appear in a table (below). This info can be helpful to myself and others. I can use it to determine when to put out a new gift card, for example.

Final hint: the gift card is located at a mapped feature. So there's a finite number of possibilities that will shrink as squares get eliminated. Someone can probably locate the final before the end of the tour. This may be necessary given the aforementioned issues with CPs. I'm planning to do CP pick-up on May 1st since the course seems to be falling apart.

Park at the Eno River State Park Pump Station Trailhead along Rivermont Rd (car icon on map). Head south on an initially unmarked trail away from the state park along a sewer line. Stay east of Nancy Rhodes Creek as the now red-blazed trail winds south and upstream. At about 0.7 km, an unmarked trail intersects and descends towards the creek. Check your map: 

You should now be in the NW corner square of the 5x5 chessboard (A5).

Time to look for the first CP. Good luck!

Backstory: over the past 5 months, I've used geocaches for navigation practice culminating with a recent completion of the BHC. I've hypothesized that a map using a custom grid vs. standard coordinates might eliminate the cheat code afforded by GPS. Recalling a virtual rogaine from last summer, I designed this local course. It cannot be a geocache due to "cache saturation," which is fine as it's experimental and only meant to be up for less than a month. I hope you get to enjoy it and take a moment to appreciate this fellow.

L: Phil at CP 1 & a tricky CP 4 (PC: Phil); R: final location

Results/Report: There were no finishers within the 20 days that the course was deployed. It required the sleuthing of a stubborn geocacher as well the precision of an accomplished orienteer. The tags that I used for CPs were perhaps a bit too diminutive and vulnerable to disappearing. That being said, when I went to pick them up, I was pleased to find 23 of the 25 CPs still intact, so not too bad. 

Not too bad... And yet one misplaced or lost control could've derailed someone's entire attempt, so still unacceptable. Back to the drawing board, I think I've devised a solution that should resolve this issue. Don't be surprised if you see a Knight's Tour at a future BOK event! Thank you to the few people I know who gave this a try. I myself struggled to find a couple CPs that I had set! Livelox replay.