Herewith my last on the topic. But I must say that what really ticked me off was the statement from the NPS that the GPS people had been trained to avoid damaging features. And then they go climb on a cone with delicate sinter encrustations. Top line training, I guess. Beyond that, "we" don't go out climbing on geyserite formations. I trust "you" don't step on any of the Lion Group's cones when up on it's mound, because as a geyser gazer I should hope you'd know better (and I know David does). And "I", years ago in the course of in-uniform duties, did go off trail but I most decidedly did not climb a cone. Finally, while I know others (most others) will disagree, and while I admit that I make use of electronic download data since it is available, I fondly recall the days when we figured things out on our own without relying on electronics. Which is a way of saying I wish "you" weren't going up on Lion's mound (as an example) at all. the end. Scott Bryan On Dec 5, 2007, at 4:02 PM, David Goldberg wrote: However the distinction between that cone and all the other sinter they had to walk on to do their job is something you probably have to be a geyser gazer to appreciate. Incidentally, how do you think we download Lion Geyser these days. Every month someone has to walk all over the Lion Group sinter mound. The GIS data only had to be taken once ever. So can we please get down off our soap boxes and quit moaning about questionable proceedures used nine years ago when we do the same thing all the time now. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: </geyser-list/attachments/20071206/59a7f21b/attachment.html>