August 23, 1999
COMPASS, MAP AND STARS OVER YELLOWSTONE
Sunday after work I was off to Buffalo Ranch, in the northeast part of the park, for a class given by the Yellowstone Institute. Since I had stayed at the ranch before, check-in would be simple and the class would not start until 7:00 PM. So, en route to the ranch, I stopped at Roosevelt Lodge for a beer on the front porch.
When I arrived at the ranch, I was greeted by Wynelle and some of the arriving students. Some of us began to prepare supper, while others drove down the valley to see wolves. Sharply at 7:00 o'clock, we met our instructor, Dr. James "Jim" Halfpenny. In his introduction, he told us of his many treks in Greenland, remote parts of China, Antarctica, Canada, Alaska, Montana, and Colorado. Jim specializes in cold weather studies that include animal behavior, plant life, and human effect on the environment. Some of the books he has written, are in the institute library.
During this first evening, we learned about "Planet Earth", the moon, and the surrounding stars. We devised crude devices to take readings from the stars to determine our location on Planet Earth. We looked at stars to determine where north is and where south is. The sky was clear and the moon was just bright enough to "block out" the stars that were not a part of our study. This unique condition allowed us to see the stars we wanted without the clutter of the stars we didn't want to see. Some of the constellations that I had never been able to visualize, were perfectly clear.
Day one. We began by studying maps, almost every kind of map devised, but most of all we studied the local USGS topo map. We learned about "meets and bounds", township, range, section, the grid system, latitudes, longitudes, degrees, minutes, and seconds. We learned how to convert magnetic (compass) to true (map) and true to magnetic. We learned how to take reading from the map and how to take readings from mountain peaks. Outside, we put pins in papers from the previous night to plot the sun's travel (shadow of the pins, actually), we determined "local noon", and compared our north readings with the readings from the night before. Jim laid out a 100 meter course for us to use in determining how many meters we average in a stride. We would use this data to determine distances. We used triangulation to determine how far away objects are. Finally, each of us began making our own maps of the area including buildings and a stream. We even put in contour lines.
Day two. The highlight of this day was an orienting course. Jim had put several stakes out over a large area. He gave us a topo map with the position of each stake marked. Our job was to take readings from the map, convert them to magnetic, and measure the distances. Using the map data, each of us had our own course to follow. We used a compass and our stride measurement to attempt to find each stake. To complicate this exercise, some of the courses had obstacles to be circumnavigated or streams had to be crossed.
After the end of day, we said good-bye and off I went back to Grant where a Christmas celebration was taking place. I arrived in time to eat and load into a pickup truck and go through the campground singing Christmas carols. "Christmas In The Park" is August 25th. This is an old tradition from 1900 when people camping in the park were stranded by a freak snowstorm. They said, "This is just like Christmas." So Christmas has been celebrated on August 25th every since.