HMP98 -- Thursday, July 16, 1998
Today a die hard crew of hardy explorers set off on a 50 mile, 10-hour round trip traverse in search of the elusive passage to the promised land of martian analogs, the Valley Networks of Devon. Our Team consisted of Pascal Lee, John Schutt, Jim Rice, Peter Essick, David Reyes, and Christian Lardier. The previous year's team was turned back in their quest for the Valley Networks by the horrible Slope of Woe. This year's team would not be denied, an alternate route was plotted on air photo and topographic map. After crossing miles and miles of bone-jarring polygonal terrain, deep canyons, raging streams, and rocky slopes we finally made it. We spent several hours examining the area which resembles similar features seen on Mars.
After a while we headed home with gas tanks low. One false turn would spell doom, but thanks to the navigation skills of Pascal and John and David's GPS unit we were soon on our way with confidence. The result of this excursion was that we determined that the preferred method of viewing the Valley Networks is by helicopter (bottom picture).
