Training Log Archive: mintore

Leisurely wander through Story. First time here in many years and, as was mentioned on another blog, the map has stood up really well, even truly shockingly, the general state of vegetation). We carefully compared a KP map to the Mark Adam's map and found very few topographical inconsistencies. The most striking difference was mapping style. On the 1:15,000 1993 map, reentrants were highlighted by dark brown gully lines. Today, the use of this symbol seems to be limited to relatively narrow and steep unjumpable gullies -- sometimes a few meters wide (in GA) and other times valleys with very steep channels in the bottom that can only be reliably exited at an end (KY and occasionally OH). Interestingly, the Story map is stylistically the same as the old 1980 Yellowwood (TC Steele) map where the gully lines simply denote the bottoms of clear, relatively sharp reentrants. I am not sure if it was the mapper (don't know who did the 1980 map) or the time, but the thing that was obvious in the park today was that I could navigate with the "gullies" and visualize the terrain and long, narrow spurs. Without them, there would be many confusing, and subtle undulating features at 1:15 that are nevertheless really big on the ground. It would be much, much, much harder to run on (it would make an interesting, if strange, training exercise to have a motala with half the maps in each style).

So two questions are: is the old style dead or is it still justifiable to use? A map is supposed to provide enough detail to navigate well and I can see the argument that the gully lines do that. (It likely does require either a mapper's note or the first 10 min of a run to learn the standard).

A second question is how was Story really used for meets in early years given the dearth of parking?

Run with A, some quicker bits and some winding bits in the woods.