No matter how you slice and dice it, Nine Mile Hole lacks the nine clues to get to the location, and it lacks precision dictated in the directions to follow the clues "precisely" - there were searchers in that area well before Jack, Justin, etc., well before the Maple Fire in 2016, so the purported "damaged" blaze wasn't the issue - the location not being correct was the issue.
Well, there is also the fact that browns are not running in that stretch of the Madison until mid-September/early-October due to the water temp being too high....they run that stretch when the water is cold. Fenn spent summers in Yellowstone, when the water was too warm for browns, so Fenn would not have been fishing Nine Mile Hole for browns during the summers there. The stretch between Seven Mile Bridge and Big Bend is dominated by panfish most of the summer and fall.
Many contend that crossing the river fits in with 'no place for the meek' - I can live with that interpretation but have a seriously hard time seeing Fenn cross the river four times in one afternoon, twice carrying something heavy; the chest (which is unweildy in dimensions) and the contents (which if he fell and they were lost - well just imagine that). Add to that, he does this unnoticed, at 79 or 80 years old. One only needs to watch videos of him shortly after the chase started to realize he didn't cross the Madision four times in one day at Nine Mile Hole to hide the chest and contents.
@jpsaxnc IMO - The 200 foot landmark (and the 500 foot one) didn't have to be substantial but had to be recognizable by name if Forrest could identify them from an email.
In that case, they should be identifiable on a map.
Yes, some permanent feature. I thought it could be like the difference between a parking area and a trail head if the trail head was about 300 feet from the parking area. There was a story in the Totem Cafe Caper, that lead me to the Yellow Stone River. I knew that Forrest was embellishing quite a bit.
I'll add, the elevation of where the chest is/was is wrong at Nine Mile Hole.
@jpsaxnc My solve was in Abiquiu so I had two permanent features at 200 and 500 feet - the pueblo and Bode's store. I could also say that my spot qualified as being within 300ft of Dal's journey from his second website.
They are also landmarks which Chasers could visit outside the Chase and Forrest would easily recognize. The person who was at 200 feet may not have been on Chase duty
@from-a-rabbity-bunker I agree that the 200 foot person might not have been a searcher. There was a lot of discussion about that, and you would think that person would have recognized the other clues along the way, but no one on the blogs made that claim.
@jpsaxnc I do believe that the 200 foot person was a Chaser who was reporting their latest journey, otherwise why email Forrest? This trip was possibly not Chase related, but I'd love the irony of someone reporting on a failed BOTG and then mentioning, unknowingly, that they were 200 feet away from glory.
In my example, they could be filling up with gas on their way home at the Philips 66 station next to Bode's.
I had a similar experience where I walked past my blaze 12 times (6 in each direction) and placed my backpack against it, using it to support me as I sat trying to work out where I'd gone wrong, before realizing what it was.
@from-a-rabbity-bunker Yeah, the guy that found the chest said in a letter that he searched the same spot like 25 times, before he saw it.
