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GPS > 48N19E - The Börzsöny Pole


My hobby is hiking and mountaineering, but generally I am open to every outdoor activity. In the other hand I am an enthusiast of the polar explorers, so I was happy to do it in my level, finding a “pole” in the neighborhood.
The story of finding this confluence is started in a rainy Sunday morning, when together with a friend of mine, Cseke we were heading to the hills of Börzsöny. We had the tourist map of this area (1:40000) without any coordinate scaling, and a military one (1:25000) printed out from a computer having the target position on it. The confluence point itself seemed to be in a middle of a forest between two minor roads crossing the Börzsöny. Although the distance is shorter from Deszkáspuszta (Nagyoroszi-Bernecebaráti road), we have chosen Királyháza as a starting point, because the approach from Budapest is easier, and the other one sometimes closed by the army.
So we drove to Diósjenő first, and the middle of that village a faded traffic sign showed the direction to Királyháza. A picturesque road led us to the middle of the range, where we stop the car in a parking lot among some weekend houses. We picked up the maps, some cheesy cakes, apples, grape drink, and the GPSs of course. Following the hiking route marked with Red (P on local tourist map), we climbed up on a muddy path, and then turned right to the yellow one (S on map).

Forest Jungle fever


Shortly after that we turned left to a muddy road of foresters, and soon met the signs of these guy’s activity – lots of trees cut down and crossing the road. That was the point when we decide to use the GPS heading and started the “jungle adventure” – drizzling rain, thick undergrowth, mist among the trees, giant mushrooms, bird song. Just few hundred meters from the confluence point, the signal was lost, probably because we were in a valley, and the wet tree leaves, and not the magnetic anomalies of the vicinity of the Pole, as we cried out. After a short while I caught 4 satellites with my Garmin eTrex Summit, the Magellan 315 of Cseke was dead. And finally we climbed up on a slope and found the confluence point (the Pole!!!) about 5 meters (15ft) away from a muddy road - the accuracy according to the GPS was 6 meters.

The ground at 48N19E The proof The landmark we built


The quality of the pictures is rather poor – it was created from video. The red point shows the 48N19E point on the scanned map, the grid defines 2km on map (click for larger view).

The tourist map of the area


Finally here are some panoramic shots:

A view to the North A view to the East A view to the South A view to the West


To learn more about the Degree Confluence Project see webpage http://www.confluence.org