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(“Topo Maps, Trail Maps, and Satellite Imagery”)
The Pacific Crest Trail is a beautiful trail that goes from the boarder of Mexico and California though Oregon and Washington state to the boarder with Canada. This is a 2,650 miles hike that can take up to 5 months. For some, this may seem a little difficult. For those not looking for an awesome 5 month adventure, I may have something for you. The hike that is shown to the left is a 10.4 mi. hike that takes about 10 hours, depending on your average speed.
(“Topo Maps, Trail Maps, and Satellite Imagery”)
It follows the PCT the entire way, so you can have the joy of experiencing the Pacific Crest Trail. It climbs up to 4,174 ft. and ends at the beautiful Silverwood lake. The trail leads through inspirational desert cliffs and picturesque forest at the Boundary Ridge. You start with a climb to 3,983 ft. Then you descend to 3,563ft. where you can enjoy a nice lunch, before climbing to the highest peak of 4,174 ft. After that you descend to 3,529 ft. to the end. Having hiked this route forward and backwards I highly suggest going on this hike.
When you are hiking long distances, you need to be able to read maps. Below is a map from the USGS of the topography of the hike. For those of you that do not know topographical maps, let my tell you. A topographical map tells you what the terrain looks like, how steep, how tall, etc. When you look at the map below you can see all the little lines. Each line is goes up or down in elevation. If you look where the arrows are pointing you can see the number 3800. Then if you look at the next number on the dark line you see that the number went up by 200 to 4000. This is how you can the elevation. All the lines are called contour lines. The interval in between the lines is called the contour interval. As you can tell the contour interval is 50 ft. So each time that you go to the next line you go up or down 50 ft. in elevation.
(“Topo Maps, Trail Maps, and Satellite Imagery”)
The beginning of the hike.
The desert cliffs.
Silverwood lake towards the end of the hike.
The beautiful scenery at the end of the hike.
Another type of map that is useful to Geologists is called Geological maps. Below is a very simplified geological map. Most geological maps look something like this.
For now we are just going to look the map below. As you can tell the map shows all the different types of rock, the earthquake faults, landslides and more. Geological maps also have a thing called, strike and dip. Strike and dip is how we can understand the geology under the ground. So how do we read strike and dip? When you look at the picture below, you can see that the strike direction is if you wanted to walk along the slope without going up or down. You can also see that the dip direction is the way that water would flow. On a map with strike and dip you can tell how things are sloping. If we take the strike and dip at a lot of places, we can see how the land looks under the surface, as you can see below(Wikipedia Contributors).
(“Typical Geologic Map | U.S. Geological Survey”)
(Fast)
(Wikipedia Contributors)
Bibliography
Fast. “Strike and Dip.” Geology Wiki, 2023, geology.fandom.com/wiki/Strike_and_dip. Accessed 30 May 2023.
“MapView (Beta) | NGMDB.” Usgs.gov, 2023, ngmdb.usgs.gov/mapview/?center=-118.877,38.118&zoom=6. Accessed 30 May 2023.
“Topo Maps, Trail Maps, and Satellite Imagery.” Gaiagps.com, 2023, www.gaiagps.com/map/?loc=13.8/-117.4307/34.3160&layer=usgs-topo. Accessed 30 May 2023.
“Typical Geologic Map | U.S. Geological Survey.” Usgs.gov, 2023, www.usgs.gov/media/images/typical-geologic-map. Accessed 30 May 2023.
Wikipedia Contributors. “Strike and Dip.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Mar. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_and_dip#/media/File:Anticline_and_a_dike_in_cross_section.svg. Accessed 30 May 2023.
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