Active Investigations/abandoned
File opened 8 Nov 2019 · closed 30 Mar 2021 · Latchford, ON
The Second Container, Latchford
Abandoned
Twelve metres of shale and blowdown, four hours of searching, and a coordinate that was never going to be right.
Post-mortem
This file is closed and the reasoning is published in full, correct parts and otherwise.
What we believed. Two containers, twelve metres apart, both placed by the same person on the same afternoon in 2016. The first was recovered in February 2020 exactly where its published coordinate said it would be. It followed that the second coordinate — published by the same person, in the same format, in the same log entry — was equally good.
Why that was wrong. The two coordinates were not taken the same way. The first was recorded standing on the rail grade, in the open, with sky on three sides. The second was recorded twelve metres into closed canopy in a valley bottom. We now know from repeated testing that a single phone fix under that canopy runs reliably optimistic by 40–90 m, and that the error is not random — it pulls consistently toward the open ground the device last had a clean view of. Which is to say: the published coordinate for the second container was, in all probability, describing a spot near the first container, because that is where the phone last knew where it was.
What that means. We searched a twelve-metre radius for four hours across two visits. The correct search area was very likely an eighty-metre ellipse elongated away from the grade — an area we walked through twice on the way in and never once searched.
What we changed. Every fix the Society records is now taken twice, an hour apart, and averaged, with a compass traverse run in parallel on anything that matters. This has already redirected one search and it came directly out of failing at this one.
The container has not been found by anyone, as far as we can determine. We are no longer looking for it. Somebody should.