#1: [28-Sep-01]

25-Feb-2006 --

This might have been one of the tougher confluences that I have visited. Not due to any physical obstacle – the land here is very flat but instead, due to its proximity to the US-Canadian border. This confluence is located in Canada and should only be attempted from the Canadian side.

A friend from work and I made three trips between the border stations to ensure we visited this confluence legally and that agents at both stations would know why we were out walking near the border. The friendly Canadian border agent immediately understood our request and had no issues with our walking 200 meters in the cold to zero out our GPS. We had hoped to walk in the clearway along the border and then go just a bit north to the point so went back to the US side.

The US Border supervisor was very concerned that we wanted to use a GPS to find a random point just north of the border and then take pictures of it. We had hoped to just walk down the border clearway, past the monument and to the point. She was concerned that we might take pictures of her border station and then be able to locate the position of it. We were strongly cautioned not to take any pictures of the US border station or to take any GPS readings near there showing the exact location of the border station. In my explanations, I produced some TerraServer imagery at a scale that depicted both the confluence and the border station. She seemed surprised and unaware that these images are made available from the US Government and are available to anyone! She made photo copies of this image, our identifications, and of the previous confluence narrative. I’m glad I didn’t show any of the other geo-rectified imagery freely available on the web with far more detail or point out that the location of the border station is accurately depicted on multiple maps and GIS systems! To make a long story short, we ended up driving a couple hundred meters north and parking just beyond the Canadian station. With their permission, we achieved our confluence goal and returned in less than 15 minutes.

We found the confluence just east of a row of bushes in an open field. It was an easy walk to and from where we had parked.

Crossing back in the US, the border agents demanded to see the pictures that we had taken that day. We humored this hubris by showing the pictures we had taken (described below) and then continued on our way home.

Picture #1 looks north from the confluence. Picture #2 looks east. Picture #3 looks south, the actual border is just beyond the berm in the distance. Picture # 4 looks west. Picture #5 shows my GPS location.

My coldest confluence visit ever!

The borderline with the U.S. is running about 75 m south of the Confluence.