Priory Navigation Exercise

For this assignment, the class headed over to The Priory in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and prepared to navigate the wooded area to find the location of a total of five trees. Once there, students were split into groups of three and given the UTM coordinates of the five tree locations. Additionally, each group was provided a can of spray paint and ribbon to mark their trees once found, and a tracker so that Professor Hupy would be able to review the group's course later on, and confirm that the trees in which they selected were marked correctly. Using a previously made map and handheld GPS device, the students began their descent into the forest, and began locating and making their designated trees. Figure 1 below shows a student marking a located tree with ribbon.

Figure 1: Marking a tree with ribbon

The terrain in the wooded area had extreme ranges in elevation at different various points. In some instances, it was more beneficial to walk around the ridges rather than attempting to cut through them, especially with the ground being wet and slippery from rain, which continued throughout the navigation excursion. The combined cloud and tree coverage made the GPS units lag quite a bit when travelling from site to site. Also, GPS units from the phone app synced to the tracking device and the handheld GPS device often did not match up. For these reasons, it was often difficult to pin-point the exact location of the tree in question. Professor Hupy advised that a 10 meter buffer from the exact point location would suffice for the purposes of the exercise.

The excursion forced students to get lost and rely on their mapping and location skills to return back to the original meeting point. Overall, the exercise was a stimulating challenge that allowed students to do some hiking and exploring in the backyards of Eau Claire.