This article describes an ongoing project that has the goal to visit the degree intersections of
each latitude and longitude on land, or within sight of land, around the world documenting the
visit with photographs at each location and publish them on the Degree Confluence website
Figure 10: reported minimal distances. distances over 40m are not shown.
the median is 7 m, the average is over 635 m due to some outliers.
Figure 10 shows how close confluence
visitors were able to reach their target.
The maximum at 5m correlates well
with the positional accuracies for current
hand held GPS receivers. The other
peaks at 10m, 20m and 30m are caused
by rounding and imprecise reporting.
What confluence has most
unsuccessful attempts?
36°N 112°W, Arizona, USA has 7
unsuccessful attempts due to its location
in the Grand Canyon. This point in the
National Park is tempting for many
visitors, who then fail 200m from
the goal at almost vertical Coconino
Sandstone. The second rank is taken
by confluence 41°N 112°W near Salt
Lake City in Utah with 5 attempts. The
salt march of the Great Salt Lake forced
five visitors to abandon their mission.
Which confluences had most visits?
50°N 0°, England, 60 km north
of London: 21 visits.
37°N 122°W, California, 75 km
south of San Francisco: 19 visits.
40°N 105°W, Colorado, 25 km
north of Denver: 16 visits.
Expectedly, these frequently visited
confluences are located close to
megacities and easily accessible.
Which confluence had most visitors? 48°N 9°W Southern Germany – 538
visitors within 13 visits. A teacher
managed to bring 470 students of a school.
What are the highest confluences?
30°N 81°E, Nepal 5870m
(not yet visited)
33°N 80°E, Tibet, China 5836m
(visited on 29-May-2005)
34°N 82°E, Tibet, China
5805m (not yet visited)
Unfortunately, the most reliable and exact
source for altitude data today, the SRTM
90m survey, does not provide information
for this area. Therefore Google Earth – a
less reliable elevation data source – was
used, introducing an uncertainty about
the ranking of these confluences. So the
ranking will stay a mystery until these
points have actually been reached.
What are the highest successful
confluence visits?
33°N 80°E,
Tibet, China
5836m (visited
on 29-May-2005,
11-day hitch
& hike trip)
30°N 90°E,
Tibet, China
5587m (visited
on 20-May-2004,
6-day exhausting
hike)
18°S 69°W, La
Paz, Bolivia5170m (visited on 21-May-2007
3-day drive & hike)
What is the lowest confluence?
30°N 27°E, Matruh, Egypt -83m
(visited on 04-Dec-2004)
Incomplete visits
Imagine that you need to explain to
a landowner in Kiswahili what the
meaning of visiting integer degree
intersections is – in particular if your
conversational partner has never seen
a GPS receiver nor a map either.
In one out of three visits, the actual
confluence location could not be
reached due to obstacles like trees,
houses, fences, dogs, rivers, cost lines,
swamps, ice, cliffs, legal matters, heat,
dehydration, exhaustion, laziness, time
pressure, breakdowns, land mines, broken
vehicles, miring, dead ends, confusion,
spoilers, impatience, underestimation,
missing daylight, empty batteries, broken
GPS, altitude sickness, mosquitoes,
radioactivity, military areas, cultural
differences, language barriers, policemen,
monetary claims, exorbitant prices,
landowners, missing stamina or unbearable
looks of bewilderment. According to the
rules of the confluence project, visits with
a minimal distance of more than 100m
are regarded as incomplete. 9% of all
submitted visits are stated incomplete, but
the fraction of unreported attempts may
well be over 20%, since the willingness
of publishing own failures is usually low. Figure 11: reasons for incomplete visits. sample size
is 300 out of 1106 incomplete attempts total.
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