Anyone know anything about a Starolater/Starblater[sp?] Pass named in 1973? It's between Reef lake & Sharktooth Creek

[erutan]

It was hard to read, and hard to photograph, but I'm getting around to asking about this mystery.

We stumbled across a massive packer sized cairn at a lookout near Reef Lake (one of the pretty little sterile lakes above Beetlebug Lake between Peter Pande & Lost Keys Lakes). I assume it was marking a route down Sharktooth Creek - nearby carved into granite was something along the lines of:

Starolater???
Pass
AD 73

update: 37.48527, -119.02079 are the GPS coordinates. It's a neat area so I expect I'll be up there again at some point and I'll try to take some more shots of it from different angles, some video, etc.

the area in question

one shot of the rock

and another

the view down canyon N from the "pass"

[grampy]

@erutan -
Now that you’ve wrecked my otherwise peaceful morning , I’ll add my dumb opinions. On the top line, the first two letters do look to be “S” and ”T”. Unclear what next two are, but the final five look (to me) like “O U T D A”. Not too helpful, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say “STAROLATOR”.
Also not sure the next line says “PASS” … looks to me like it could say “MASS”, so could be somebody with the initials A.D. camped there in 1973, and they were from some oddly-named town (aren’t most of them ?) in Massachusetts.
>> if I’m wrong about the “D” and it really is an “O”, and the “A” is really an “N”, then the last letters could be “TON” … in which case the name (with a stretch) could be be read as “STOUGHTON MASS”.
Any other ideas out there ?

[erutan]

Yeah, I've seen an OUT(D/O)(A/R/N) in there as well - we started calling it Starbolator just because it rolled off the tongue amusingly even though there's too many letters in it heh. I could see ST??OUGHTON in it, but there'd be 1-2 letters between the ST and the OU.

Interesting thought seeing it as a place name, it'd make more sense on the date that it's Al Dip 73 vs 73AD, as someone could just put in 1973 and it'd be a bit clearer. Someone carving an XC pass in the day is cooler to me than "I was here" graffiti. :/

I could toss up the RAW files - unfortunately I can't seem to do a great job of pulling the letters out given the high repeating contrast of the rock they're carved into.

[Carne_DelMuerto]

I just pulled down the JPGs and tried various tricks in Photoshop. You are correct, erutan, the grain of the rock makes it very difficult to discern much more than what's been offered above. If you do put up the RAW files, I might be able to give it a another shot this week.

[erutan]

Here are the RAW files (iPhone XS, shot with Halide).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hwkkpen8ik3ui ... 9.DNG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mdjnl959kr3vo ... 0.DNG?dl=0

Pulling up texture, clarity, contrast sliders in LRCC actually made things less legible. Playing with the tone curve might be the best bet.

I tried to trace what I saw as potential artificial marks on the rock hoping for some clarity vs trying to keep it all in my head, and now I'm more confused. The different angles/lighting do impact what can be seen.

I am leaning more towards the "guy from weird town in massachusets" theory.

There's some natural cracks and discolorations that throw things off - that was me trying to be intuitive about lines without trying to spell anything from them.

Could be there was a lot of manzanita and it was named "Stabouton Pass" after going through it in shorts?

STP Jouton?

[erutan]

Anyone have further thoughts?

[Jimr]

I can find something really, really close

Stoughton, Massachusetts

Staughton
Mass
AD 73

I'm going with city, state
initials, year

[Carne_DelMuerto]

Sorry, work and the holidays are eating up my time. Heavy processing with RAW filter didn't yield any better results, but here's the images.

[mkbgdns]

schools stopped teaching penmanship with chisel on stone, and this is what we get!

[grampy]

I thought on this a little more, and wondered what if this was in another language; e.g. Spanish. This would add lots more possibilities; anyway likely an unsolvable mystery.