28-Mar-2001 -- This, our second confluence (N48 W80 was our first) in Northern Ontario, Canada is along the 49th Parallel which forms most of the border between Canada and the United States of America. The border actually starts quite a bit west of this confluence. At W81 the border is 750 km south of here.

The two hearty navigators, Badge Darling and John Carhart met south of the small town of Cochrane, Ontario and noted from our Garmin GPS units that the sought after point was 750 meters East of the nearest road. It appeared to be on a property line between 2 farm houses. After explaining our mission, the nice farm lady granted us permission to cross her land and pointed out a bridge we would have to use to cross a creek to get to the spot.

Badge was on cross-country skis and I was on snowshoes. Badge decided to go ahead and ski down a fairly steep hill and determine if there was enough snow and ice cover to cross the creek and save us having to cross at the bridge which was a kilometer out of our way. Badge was successful in navigating the steep hill on skis without breaking through the crust which would have tripped him up and caused a somersault and some entertainment for me. There are a few damaged tag altar trees at the bottom of the hill that will not likely survive. The creek was deemed safe to cross and I headed down the hill on the snowshoes. After crossing the creek we followed a trail till the GPS told us the point was off to the right through heavy brush. We did the confluence hunt and circle and eventually did get to see all zeroes on the GPS. A stake was placed and marked and pictures taken. We had one Canadian Grey Jay visit but as we had no treats for him he left.

This confluence is in typical Northern Ontario scrub brush consisting of jack pine, tag altar, birch and poplar trees.

We trekked back to the vehicles and thanked the nice farm lady and went on our way to plan our next confluence.