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TMW
Select Nomad
Posts: 10659
Registered: 9-1-2003
Location: Bakersfield, CA
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I am willing to go back in April and hike down to where pictures 16-20 were taken and climb up and see whats there and take pictures. I think it would
be best to camp overnight and take off in the early morning so a full day could be taken to explore the area. I am planning to meet Ken and the
Jeepsters for a run thru the Turquesa mine. After the mine run Ken was going to mission Santa Maria at Catavina and Bajacat was joining us. I could
stay a little later and maybe Bajacat and I could hike in. Maybe Ken's Jeeps could go further than I could.
We need to put this to rest once and for all if possible. Will we be rich or just poor explorers hoping????? I get to keep the first gold cup we find.
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TMW
Select Nomad
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I have emailed Bill to see if he is interested. I'll u2u Bajacat to see if he is interested too.
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elbeau
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Posts: 256
Registered: 3-2-2011
Location: Austin, TX
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| Quote: | Originally posted by TW
I am willing to go back in April and hike down to where pictures 16-20 were taken and climb up and see whats there and take pictures. I think it would
be best to camp overnight and take off in the early morning so a full day could be taken to explore the area. I am planning to meet Ken and the
Jeepsters for a run thru the Turquesa mine. After the mine run Ken was going to mission Santa Maria at Catavina and Bajacat was joining us. I could
stay a little later and maybe Bajacat and I could hike in. Maybe Ken's Jeeps could go further than I could.
We need to put this to rest once and for all if possible. Will we be rich or just poor explorers hoping????? I get to keep the first gold cup we find.
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Once again, you're awesome. Thx.
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elbeau
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Registered: 3-2-2011
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| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
...The Jesuits could not survive most of their time on what was produced on the peninsula... it had to be supplemented with supplies from the
mainland.
Building a mission takes lots of people, food and water.
Any and all missions required good source of water and land to grow crops... The cliffside above Arroyo el Volcan is not a place to build a mission
and there is no land nearby for raising food. The arroyo may have tinajas (ponds) following rare rain, but the only year round water is a few miles
away at the El Volcan Onyx Dome, and it is rich in minerals that stain the rocks and soil down the arroyo.
There is nothing this location has in common with any other Jesuit mission project. So, what did they eat and drink while building this mission?...
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Like I've said many, many times, I'm not saying this is a Jesuit mission, only that it is a possible source of the -legends- of a "Lost Mission of
Santa Isabel". It doesn't have to actually be a Jesuit mission in order to generate the stories. You know far more than me about the history and
survivability of Baja than I do, and I won't pretend for a minute that my obsession with hoping to find something based on blurry satellite imagery
can supplant the many years worth of knowledge you've built up about the peninsula.
I do think TW's report of water in the arroyo is worth looking into. Perhaps the water table is higher than we think...but I don't know, I just know
that nobody has really produced anything to say that you could never find reliable underground water there, especially when there is a known
year-round spring just 12 miles away. It's worth checking out a little more.
I've made this point from the beginning: "I think there is enough to go on here to warrant an on-the-ground investigation of the site"
Everything I've said that I hope for beyond that is just wishful thinking...but I don't mind getting my hopes up, even if it turns out that they get
dashed in the end...heck, I thought they were dashed when you called me last week and told me the mission site had been visited and debunked, and that
was all fine.
I just think it's worth looking into.
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64535
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Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Sure it is worth looking into... why not.
When I talked to Tom on the phone from San Felipe before the line/ cell went dead, he told me they went there... and there was nothing but "rocks and
cactus"... That is what I told you when I called you...
So now, there is room for some more speculation... which is GREAT! Anything to get us back to Baja to explore is good with me.
Looking forward to it!
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tripledigitken
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4848
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I don't want to go through the thread again, so...........
Why is it you can't go do this trip yourself?
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elbeau
Nomad
Posts: 256
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Location: Austin, TX
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| Quote: | Originally posted by tripledigitken
I don't want to go through the thread again, so...........
Why is it you can't go do this trip yourself? |
Just read the first post
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elbeau
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Another thing that is developing out of this is that we're generating and documenting a fair amount of data on an area that is really quite poorly
documented online. The truth is that it's actually quite hard to find any detailed information on the arroyo and surrounding mountains. Try this:
Add every layer you can find to Google Earth and start zooming in on Baja. You'll see photos and panoramic images all over the place...but this area
and a couple others look like empty holes with no data at all except for El Marmol and the El Volcan onyx dome site and the olividada mine site near
the other side of the mountain range.
Same thing if you search Google and Bing. You'll see photos of the places I mentioned above and a few very old magazine articles and legends, but not
much in the way of a detailed geologic description.
Terraphone did pull up the location of an old mine that isn't mentioned anywhere I can find. It's near that X-shaped feature that I mentioned. The
data for the mine from a usgs data set.
Anyways, no matter what the archaeological search does or doesn't turn up I'm going to take whatever photos and descriptions we generate from this and
organize them like I have been doing in this thread and keep them posted in this thread just for the sake of documenting the region.
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surfer jim
Super Nomad
Posts: 1891
Registered: 8-29-2003
Location: high desert
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...and when they start hauling out all those gold coins it will be time for a trip down to "help out".....I can just see my pockets and shoes full of
treasure....it's even better than walking around with a donkey and a dog
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64535
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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| Quote: | Originally posted by tripledigitken
I don't want to go through the thread again, so...........
Why is it you can't go do this trip yourself? |
Ken, maybe we can get Roy (The Squarecircle) to drive his Land Rover 'Winston' to it? We can offer support (hold cold beers and watch)!
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tripledigitken
Ultra Nomad
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How is Roy?
It sounds like an interesting plan.
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64535
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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| Quote: | Originally posted by tripledigitken
How is Roy?
It sounds like an interesting plan. |
He looks good... I visited with him at his home a couple weeks ago. I think he got his computer fixed, as he has been reading Nomad... Hey Roy, ready
to drive to 'Santa Isabel'?
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TMW
Select Nomad
Posts: 10659
Registered: 9-1-2003
Location: Bakersfield, CA
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I've been studing Google Earth of the site and it does get more interesting. I've marked a few areas of interest. Using GE turn it, look at it from
different angles.
At 30-01-12x114-46-21@1850ft it appears as a path from the wash up the mtn for a 1000 ft or more. It was the stairs for the first or lower cave. It
may only be a water run off path.
At 30-01-04x114-46-22@1770ft is another set of paths up the mtn. It starts on the lower end as shown in picture 16 and also runs up the mtn maybe 1000
ft. This one appears to branch into mutliple paths. Again it may be no more than a water run off.
At 30-01-10.25x114-46-27.45@1991ft ia a dark column running down to the wash. This area is in picture 19 and 20.
It is interesting enough for me to want to go back for a better look.
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TMW
Select Nomad
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For something really weird. Go to where the road crosses El Volcan wash on Google Earth 29-59-50x114-46-10.3 and run the cursor up down and all around
the wash and the road especially on the east side. The wash at the bend is 10 to 20 feet higher than the road as well as the wash to the south. In
reality the road is higher and the wash drops in elevation as you go down it. If tilt the picture is shows the wash higher than the road on the east
side. It must be something in the GE program software.
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64535
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Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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TW, I think Beau has got you hooked, too! I am ready to support any lost mission hunt, crazy or not!
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TMW
Select Nomad
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DK what's a retired guy to do but to have fun and chase dreams. It's like being a kid again. Besides I love the desert, ghost towns, old mining camps
and missions.
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elbeau
Nomad
Posts: 256
Registered: 3-2-2011
Location: Austin, TX
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| Quote: | Originally posted by TW
For something really weird. Go to where the road crosses El Volcan wash on Google Earth 29-59-50x114-46-10.3 and run the cursor up down and all around
the wash and the road especially on the east side. The wash at the bend is 10 to 20 feet higher than the road as well as the wash to the south. In
reality the road is higher and the wash drops in elevation as you go down it. If tilt the picture is shows the wash higher than the road on the east
side. It must be something in the GE program software. |
Understanding how Google Earth does topography is pretty important when trying to understand what you're looking at when it's rendered. Google Earth
uses Nasa's SRTM topography data, which has a resolution of about 30 meters (roughly 100'). This means that with a 200' wide arroyo, Google Earth
-may- have up to two data points to work with. In addition, I believe the default terrain setting within Google Earth is to exagerate terrain by
about 50%. This makes it easier for our eyes to see the terrain from higher altitudes within the application, but also causes a stretching effect
whenever you try to zoom in close to something. For the sake of what we're doing it's sometimes nice to exagerate the terrain for a few minutes in
order to get an idea of what direction the slopes of a hill may be facing, but before making an attempt to intrepret any feature you should set the
topography setting to 1.0 (no exageration) and then still look at it knowing that Google only has a data point every 100 feet at best and is making up
everything in between.
Also, when you're looking at any feature it is VERY important to understand that Google does not attempt to decipher the surface pixels very much to
figure out what you're looking at from that your new angle so it's easy to look at things upside down and so forth. This would be fine if the
satellite that took the photos actually took them from an angle facing DIRECTLY downward...but that would require the satellite to change it's orbit
so often that it becomes unreasonable, so instead, the satellite follows an orbit that pretty well repeats itself pretty often and it simply orients
its camera toward the target of the photo. This means that you are NOT looking straight down in almost any satellite image. If you go to some known
features outside the arroyo like some structures near the coast or over at El Marmol and then start orienting the camera at different angles you will
find that the satellite that took these photos took them from the south looking almost north. Generally if you point your compass to about 5 degrees
(That means pointing the red part of Google Earth's compass about 5 degrees to the left from North) and don't tilt the camera much at all, then you
will see the features from the same angle the satellite snapped the photos from for the arroyo.
The orientation of the sun is important too. Google Earth tries to simulate "times of the day", and you can even choose the time of day you want it
to simulate...which works well if you're not zoomed in very much...but those simulated shadows are only based on the 30-meter topographic data and
Google Earth does not try to compensate or change the shadows of the individual surface features themselves...so you can make the program cast shadows
in a different direction than the actual shadows cast by the sun on the raster image. This can SERIOUSLY mess you up. Tweak your settings so that
the sun is at high noon for best close-up results.
In the end, if you want to study the arroyo best, remember that your most accurate data is from South facing slopes and your least accurate date is
from North facing slopes...especially sharp north facing slopes. the render quality of other slopes falls somewhere in between.
For us, this means that the hillside "arches" are oriented in an ideal way for accurate viewing, but the mission site is on a slight north facing
slope which gives it some distortion.
[Edited on 3-19-2011 by elbeau]
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TMW
Select Nomad
Posts: 10659
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Location: Bakersfield, CA
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Thanks, that makes sense.
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fishabductor
Senior Nomad
Posts: 800
Registered: 5-29-2010
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| Quote: | Originally posted by surfer jim
...and when they start hauling out all those gold coins it will be time for a trip down to "help out".....I can just see my pockets and shoes full of
treasure....it's even better than walking around with a donkey and a dog
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I can just see the Marines hauling off a bunch of illegal treasure hunters to the slammer, as it is a federal crime to remove anything archelogical
and/or mineral. They belong to the Mexican government.
Anything sounds better than walking around in the desert with a donkey and a dog to me....but I'd take it over being hauled off to a Mexijail.
One has to ask one's self why would anyone build anything on terrain like what is shown in DK's photos when there is much more suitable locations
around for the taking? I would assume they would have built a structure on somewhat flat ground as it would be easier to construct, but I am not a
mission guru. I haven't even seen one in person, but I am an Engineer.
What do you think DK, is this a likely Mission spot? Me thinks not.
[Edited on 3-20-2011 by fishabductor]
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Jack Swords
Super Nomad
Posts: 1094
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: Nipomo, CA/La Paz, BCS
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Just to cause trouble......
http://www.desertusa.com/mb3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=368
"Why build anything on terrain like what is shown...?"
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