On MV LeConte* , both coming and going, we’ll navigate with geopdfs like this one, staying oriented to bedrock type, Lingít place names, etc PS: Since uploading this barebones version, I figured out how to include bottom-shading, soundings, etc on the geopdf. But this makes the point. (*another Deceased Dead [racist] Dignitary we should Desist commemorating: henceforth the DDDD divorce proceedings, or DDDDDP for short. Or is it long?)
Prep for the big one:
Below is what I wrote before the tour . . .won’t bother to change future to past-tense. Links may prove helpful to folks exploring the water and land-based reaches of our weekend jaunt. My journal will eventually be included in the scoping/journaling document for this course. Stay tuned!
From the water Our most ambitious excursion in this fastpaced geo-adventure will be the forthcoming ferry&van tour through Greater Chilkat Watershed. Although I’ve always felt a little presumptuous calling shiprail gawking “hands-on,” the ride from Áak’w Tá, little lake bay (Auke Bay) to Tan.aaní, fish-jumping grounds (Tanani Pt terminal) is so unmistakably GEOLOGICAL as to merit a semester course of its own. Maybe we won’t be touching any dirt or rocks till we get on the ground up there. But the wind in our hair counts, eh?
Stereo Cathy and I are both longtime fans of landscape interpretation through stereograms—paired photos giving a 3D view. This wednesday, we’ll bring pocket stereoscopes for everybody and use em to both review the S’awdáan trip and preview Greater Chilkat Watershed (GCW). We’ll also have them onboard the ferry, for more practice at raven’s-eye landscape-sleuthing.
Download stereogram appendix here 5M 
Chilkat Atlas excerpt As explained in the link above, I’ve been working with groups in the Chilkat on a massive biogeo-cultural atlas for GCW. Made a compressed (low-res) version of the sections on bedrock, surf-geo, glaciers, and hydrology. . .
PS, 0915: Cathy decided that—especially considering challenges with connectivity and battery-drain on this excursion—it’d be handy to have color copies of this atlas excerpt for everybody. She’s printing em today. For that I made a higher-res version. If you’d like that digitally as well, through away the earlier-posted 3MB version and download this
Geopdfs We could easily be using a dozen different geopdfs over this wide-ranging weekend tour. (Unlike apps using online navigation that can ’tile’ for better resolution zooming in, these offline basemaps are rasters; as you zoom in, they get pretty coarse. So I like to crop em tightly around each area to be explored) Since the free version of Avenza only allows 3 geopdfs at a time, that could present problems in areas beyond downloading range.
A solution I’m experimenting with on my old iphone is to set up a folder for all of the geopdfs we might be using. It’d be wise for each of us to create and load this folder before departure Friday morning. So far, I can pull a geopdf out of this storage folder into Avenza, but not the reverse; from there, I can only delete them. If any of you find a way to do that—or have other solutions to offline pdf-swapping—please let us know.
Meanwhile, at a minimum, let’s leave UAS with 2 ‘master’ geopdfs loaded to our Avenza apps. Collectively, albeit at a coarse scale, they cover the entire weekend from Áak’w Tá to the Canadian border and back.
Ahah! In class last night, I lamented that I couldn’t have my cake and eat it too. ie, show both bathymetric and above-sea hillshades. Also couldn’t find an Avenza-worthy NOAA marinechart geopdf. (still would love to hear of one, if you find a source) Ideally, we should see the hillshade bottom features but also have soundings superposed—not have to toggle pdfs back and forth in Avenza. Last night I tediously ‘cleaned up’ and georeferenced a jpg of the soundings and overlaid it as faint (barely legible) ‘skim’ of soundings in fathoms. Here’s the result:
3pm note: Realistically, i may not add much to geopdfs/stereo packages until finished packing/organizing. Check back before you turn in this eve. No doubt there’ll be thumbtiddling time at the terminal tomorrow morning, but I can’t remember how good connectivity is out there.
handy gear for the trip
● hey, I just thought of a useful tool for offline file-swapping. I you have an SD cardreader that plugs into your phone, we can trade fairly large files fairly quickly. I’ll have the full collection of geopdfs, and a ton of other stuff, on my laptop and phone.
● binoculars
● battery charger and cord for your phone
● scope&tripod if you have one. I’ll be bringing a good pair but it’d be nice to have one more with this many people.
Ferry & roadside stereopairs
Here’s a package of stereo to use on your phones as we travel:
