ST-04 · 1488 m
Larchgate
Longest continuous record on the massif. Temperature logger buried 30 cm; the sensor cable has been chewed twice.
0220
0640
1080
1520
1940
2160
Field Journal № 12
Reading the land by its lines
2380 m
Six seasons surveying the Kalder Massif, redrawn one contour at a time.
Begin descent ↓1940Alpine zone
Where the lines crowd together
Above the last stunted pine the sheet turns dense. Forty metres of rise inside eleven metres of ground — the contours press until the paper reads almost solid. Everything we know about this face was measured in weather that made measuring difficult.
Steepness on a topographic sheet is not drawn, it is implied. The cartographer never shades a cliff; she simply lets the interval do the work, and the reader's eye supplies the vertigo. On the north face of Kalder the interval collapses so tightly that we broke convention and thinned every second line to keep the sheet legible at 1:25 000.
The alpine band carries four permanent stations and one that moves. Station Vane sits on a col that has shifted twice since 1998 — not the rock, but the pin, walked downhill by freeze and thaw at roughly four centimetres a year. We now re-survey it every second spring and log the drift as its own small dataset.
1520Treeline
Stations along the tree limit
Six monitoring posts strung across the boundary where forest gives out. Each returns a weekly reading; each has its own stubborn personality.
ST-07 · 1531 m
Pale Scree
Sits on unstable talus. We resurvey its position each season and the correction is never zero.
ST-11 · 1556 m
North Bench
Shaded until eleven in the morning, which shows in every thaw curve we have plotted from it.
ST-15 · 1502 m
Gorse Shelf
The warmest post, and the one that will tell us first when the tree limit finally moves upward.
1080Forest belt
Transect log, spring season
Six walked lines, each crossing the contour grain rather than following it. Ordered by ascent, not by date.
- T-01Wet
Beck Crossing to Larchgate
4.2 km · 486 m gain · two fords, one impassable in melt
- T-02Historic
Old Charcoal Road
6.8 km · 312 m gain · follows a nineteenth-century haul track
- T-03Steep
Pale Scree Traverse
3.1 km · 604 m gain · loose ground above 1400 m
- T-04Level
North Bench Contour Walk
5.5 km · 88 m gain · the only line that keeps a single elevation
- T-05Wet
Hollow Tarn Approach
2.7 km · 421 m gain · sounding gear carried in by hand
- T-06Steep
Sarn Ridge Direct
4.9 km · 872 m gain · the steepest sanctioned route on the sheet
0640Valley floor
Benchmark register
Every height on this sheet resolves back to one of six brass marks set into bedrock along the valley.
| Mark | Location | Elev. (m) | Last check | Drift |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BM-A1 | Low Ford, east abutment | 641.08 | Apr 2026 | +0.4 mm |
| BM-A4 | Kalder Mill, gable stone | 652.77 | Apr 2026 | 0.0 mm |
| BM-B2 | Beck Crossing, north pier | 688.31 | Mar 2026 | −1.2 mm |
| BM-B9 | Charcoal Road, milepost 3 | 714.60 | Oct 2025 | +0.9 mm |
| BM-C3 | Gorse Shelf, outcrop pin | 802.15 | Sep 2025 | +2.6 mm |
| BM-C7 | Sarn Ridge, base cairn | 948.42 | Sep 2025 | −0.3 mm |
0220Basin · sea approach
Receive the sheet each season
Four printed editions a year, hand-folded, plus the raw levelling data as an open file. No charge for schools and survey clubs.