Cartman's Mom

I have a photocopy of the chest pinned to my wall at work.  I put it there as a reminder to leave at a more reasonable hour and to allow for time in the evenings and weekends to continue this project.  Lately I've been relating that image to another one, a spot that had an interesting probability that I mentioned in my first post, one which I had been researching with very little progress.

Today I received in the mail a book called Ouray Ice Park Guide, a guide to ice routes in a man-made ice climbing park in Ouray, CO (pronounced you-ray).  The book is great.  It makes me want to learn how to do this.  I've seen a couple of mentions of this feature in other blogs but hadn't given it much of a glance until I looked up the meaning of the river on which this park sits, Uncompaghre River.  Depending on one's preferred reference, Uncompaghre is presumably a Ute word for unca (hot), pah (water), and gre (spring).  Further reading about the Ice Park suggests the creators have made a deal with the local government to allow them to tap into the reservoir on a dam of Uncompaghre.  This deal allows them to spray the water into the canyon at night allowing it to freeze to the canyon walls.  This attracts ice climbers.  Warm water seems to be halting everywhere here in taking this canyon down.  And Brown Mountain is a prominent peak near Ouray, with a very visible angle from the park up the Million Dollar Highway.  You can see this from Google Maps street view.  Water high and worth the cold is a bit obvious.

I couldn't find a clear list of route names in my research.  I wanted to see if anything meek, wise, or wood related might appear.  The book lists all of the routes.  Almost 200 of them.  Many of them are themed from the South Park cartoon, meaning if you have certain beliefs about foul language, you'll find this place a bit discomforting.  My kids and I just laugh like juveniles who aren't supposed to be watching "that trash".  Of the 200 names, maybe 1 or 2 qualify for potential matches in the poem (Jesus is synonymous with meek and wise, and I suppose a Sh*thouse is made of wood), but I'm pretty well convinced now from this list of route names this place is also just coincidental.  It's just hard to imagine Mr. Fenn abseiling down an ice wall to hide a 10x10 inch box inside a finger crack, and then climbing back up with ice axes and crampons... twice.

And so I post it here.  It doesn't mean I won't stop there to have a look on my path to where I think it is now, one of 5 spots just reduced from 6.   The fifth spot will be my last place I will look.  I know a lot about Ouray now.  I've keenly searched the names of the trusts and landowners nearby from the free Ouray County Google Earth plot records.  I wondered if Mr. Fenn might have purchased a plot.  Not that I could tell.  Plus the town is known as "Switzerland of America".  How could I skip it?  I lived in Switzerland for a while and blogged about that experience, too.

Over-thinking

Using synonyms against node feature names matched to keywords I tagged from the poem (this is why the probabilities are running amuck), and grouped with WGS84 datum (I like decimal for easier proximity checks, sorry) within a defined proximity tolerance, clusters of features start to appear.

I've read a ton of blog posts of other searchers, and this approach seems to be the most common and intuitive human approach for interpreting the possibilities.  The math used to mine these results isn't a difficult task with the available data, and it seems proximity clusters can be visually cross-checked with other public sources like mapcarta.com or google maps.  Consequently, this interpretive approach also seems to be the way the poem's author suggests is "over-thinking" the solution.  Perhaps it is.  From the results I am seeing, it would seem that "warm waters halt", "too far to walk" and "worth the cold" would be the highest probable clues for over-thought synonyms, and these might contain the highest significance.  It is in these three clues where I will focus my attention in analyzing cluster results as their context seems to be oddly placed.

Here's an example of a cluster.  It isn't completely sequential, but it could be coincidental.  I thought "Sherwood" was a hilarious find with "brave=sure".

Clue	pc#352 - 67.77%
	Feature	N	W	Elevation
As I have gone alone in there
And with my treasures bold,
I can keep my secret where,
And hint of riches new and old.
Begin it where warm waters halt	Frye Lake	42.7088	108.8775	8514
And take it in the canyon down,	Sinks Canyon	42.758	108.7965	6152
Not far, but too far to walk.	Walker's Ditch	42.7447	108.7862	6860
Put in below the home of Brown.	Browns Canyon	42.6977	108.7454	6663
From there it's no place for the meek,	Wolf Trail	42.711654	108.857243
The end is ever drawing nigh;	Fossil Hill	42.7144	108.8482	9039
There'll be no paddle up your creek,	Sawmill Creek	42.708044	108.839133
Just heavy loads and water high.
If you've been wise and found the blaze,	Weiser Knoll	42.6541	108.6184	6588
Look quickly down, your quest to cease,
But tarry scant with marvel gaze,
Just take the chest and go in peace.
So why is it that I must go
And leave my trove for all to seek?
The answers I already know,
I've done it tired and now I'm weak.
So hear me all and listen good,
Your effort will be worth the cold.	Cold Spring	42.6759	108.7779	8084
If you are brave and in the wood	Sherwood Point	42.6186	108.826
I give you title to the gold.
Quote:  I said I hid it	Hidden Creek
Quote:  I think kids have an advantage	Young Mountain

Begin it where...

About a month ago, I started field testing a set of text mining algorithms which combines map nodes with a library of English language synonyms.  I won't go into detail of the reasons for the original intent of this work, but field testing has led me to "the poem".  I thought: why not see if I can solve what hasn't been located by as many as 30,000 others?

I am now more than just intrigued by this funny little array of carefully crafted words.

The challenge is to find "context" within such a set of words, decipher the context with synonym possibilities, and assign probabilities as they relate to proximity cluster sets of map nodes within a distance tolerance.  In this case, the author suggests there is also a sequential context.  To this extent, interpretation of the results for sequential context must be applied such as with a TSP algorithm.

To start, I scanned his two books and converted them to text.  I used a thesaurus software for synonym clusters.  I used GATE and Mathematica (I also dabbled in Octave for specific fuzzy relational operations) and Groovy as my framework.  Interpreting unstructured text and inferring context is a field I have been working in for a few years, at first indirectly, and more recently directly.

I then tagged the poem with location contexts and began comparing these with "clues" suggested to be sprinkled across the stories.  Predictable patterns emerged, including specific focus on certain keyword relationships from the poem like "halt", "the end", "nigh", "cease", and the mysterious Omega symbols from the books (colophon).  I observed heavy undertones of Turkish fatalism, but not surprising from a man who was facing his inevitability with witness of what disease had done to his beloved father.

I've been tempted to enrich my results by crawling blogs where curious treasure hunters have cleverly opened up comments to aggregate ideas.  As I started down this path, I realized that introducing so much noise would lead to entropy.  But, a word to the wise:  search terms and general geo-references end up on blog stats.  If you came here through a search engine, you're tipping me to your ideas.  It's no different for the other longer-lasting bloggers who provide such helpful tips and insights (no offense, I get "clever").

The gentleman who has challenged me has architected a nasty little set of attractive red herrings which has sent many families into a thoughtless pattern of searching the wilderness inside 382,894 square miles.  Thankfully he decided to narrow the search a bit more by restricting us to the USA, and then Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.  And even more within a range of elevation: above 5K and below 10,200 feet.

Using elevation and boundary attributes with the map nodes helped to limit certain cluster prospects, but I needed to be cautious with this approach because "the end" node is in the target range, not necessarily the beginning.  After reviewing these results, it started to appear as no sequential pattern was emerging.  The clever gentleman appears to be using more visual queues than those recorded into well-known mapping software.  I now fall into his classification of armchair hunter.

Here are several of my algorithm results which turned up some interesting clusters.  I do this for no other reason than to describe the results of my math.  I will keep playing but I have found separate reward in locating targets from synonym-encrypted sources.

... where warm waters halt
- Warm Springs Station, WY, Pony Express
- Warm Springs Cliff, WY
- the end of Luke Rd, at Yellowstone Lake

... canyon down
- Sinks Canyon

... too far to walk
- Sevenmile Hole trail
- Ninemile trail

... the home of Brown
- Hazelton, WY
- Brown's Pass, Hartsel, CO
- Brown's Park, WY
- Browns Mountain, WY
- Browns Canyon near Sinks, south of Lander

... no place for the meek
- Wolf Trail

... the end is ever drawing nigh
- Sand Draw Creek
- Sand Draw Rd
- Dinosaur Hill

... no paddle
- Skull this or that (scull)

... brave and in the wood
- Sherwood Point, WY

... worth the cold
Cold Spring

Other clues:

Children have an advantage.
- Childs Creek, WY
- Disneyland Rd, near Teacher's Rd in Pavillion, WY  - what the hell is this place except an EPA risk?

I have a place in mind where children would enjoy that I'm going to check which required additional non-English synonyms.  Most of the clues can't be found on the map nodes I have.  Not sure if the gentleman knew this when preparing his clues, but if he did... extremely clever, and it would speak to why no one has found it yet.