Unnamed Adirondack mountain, ‘‘Sentinel’’ benchmark (south of Slide Mountain), summit

[Raymond]

I thought I’d climbed this mountain the other day. I located the benchmark, which agreed closely enough with the summit coördinates from my Northeast 3000-Footer list to convince me I’d found the summit. There was even a broken jar there, although it had just moss inside, not a register. Later I was dismayed to see that the Plinth, Quoin & Cornice High Peaks map shows that there are two higher contours south of the benchmark. The benchmark is elevation 3212, the contours are 3220.

The higher contours don’t appear on the modern metric maps.

Do those of you working on the New York 3K list visit each or either of those higher contours, or just the benchmark? If everyone has been locating the benchmark and considering the mountain climbed, then I won’t worry about it. Those old 1953 maps had other errors on them, so it’s possible that this is just another one. But maybe it isn’t.

 

[Papa Bear]

I thought I’d climbed this mountain the other day. I located the benchmark, which agreed closely enough with the summit coördinates from my Northeast 3000-Footer list to convince me I’d found the summit. There was even a broken jar there, although it had just moss inside, not a register. Later I was dismayed to see that the Plinth, Quoin & Cornice High Peaks map shows that there are two higher contours south of the benchmark. The benchmark is elevation 3212, the contours are 3220.

The higher contours don’t appear on the modern metric maps.

Do those of you working on the New York 3K list visit each or either of those higher contours, or just the benchmark? If everyone has been locating the benchmark and considering the mountain climbed, then I won’t worry about it. Those old 1953 maps had other errors on them, so it’s possible that this is just another one. But maybe it isn’t.

You should be aware that these survey markers were never intended to mark the highest point of a peak but were almost always used for triangulation which would enable the surveyors from the USCG&S or USGS to provide locations, not elevations. Yes they were often near the highest point, but more importantly they were sited to allow intervisibility with other stations.

Some times the surveyors report will say "station is at the highest point of the peak" when they are clearly not, but to a surveyor that may have meant something different than it does to a peakbagger. It often meant "more or less at or sorta near the highest point". And for many survey markers, the original reports are not easily available.

So a peakbagger should never assume a survey marker is at the highest point (but it might be).

I know nothing about this specific situation but I'm very familiar with the general situation.

 

[Peakbagr]

There are three NY3k peaks in a row right there.
The Sentinel just south of South Notch with a metric benchmark of
979m (3,212') is one of the peaks. For good measure, I'd climb the summit with the benchmark and the bump immediately south.

Slide Mt is another 3k, immediately north of the Notch. The third of the 3ks is immediately north of Slide.

 

[Raymond]

Yeah, I know. I didn’t have time to go for North Slide too.

My list indicated that the benchmark was more or less at the highest point, the summit’s assigned elevation (on my list) matched the elevation stamped on the benchmark, the broken jar even seemed to confirm it had been considered to be the highest summit by someone. The extra contour lines weren’t on the recent maps, just the older one, so I wanted to know what everyone has been bagging.

Had I but known, I would have headed south to look for the apparently higher points (they are separated by at least a 140-foot deep col, according to the Plinth, Quoin & Cornice map), but being already south of the supposed summit coördinates when I got onto the ridge, I only went north.

The point of my question was that if everyone else has been judging high points by recent maps (as the compiler of my list was, apparently; I received the list from Bill Bowden, but I don’t know if he put it together or not), then perhaps everyone else bagging that summit has also gone to the benchmark and not looked around carefully for slightly higher points to the south, if they even exist, and if so, I don’t want to be the only one concerned about returning to examine the mountain more carefully. It wasn’t that much fun the first time.

On a geographically-related question, what’s the deal with that old camp down there nearer Slide Mountain?

 

[John H Swanson]

I target the summit, not the bencmark, nor the canister. There are summits where the canister is not on the summit. One notable one was Whitewall where the canister at the top of the cliff was much lower than the actual summit.

When there are multiple bumps, I usually traverse the top and "summit" each bump; comparing the elevation on the altimeter.