Felix'
WoGE 466 led to an amazing christmas-tree-like rock formation in a canyon on what may be Mexico's most polluted river.
Is this game getting too complicated? I don't know, but it looks as if there is a small group of people with a "special talent" for drawing together all the little clues and then ending up in more or less the right location. Those of us who have found many will continue to do so, because we know how to do this. And of course some of us are just to stubborn to give up if we don't find it right away!
We can only hope that keeping the game running will bring in more new players, and more new talented puzzle-solvers. I notice that among the "top ten WoGE-finders", two of us are relative newcomers having played less than 100 rounds since the first find (I don't like to call it a "win").
Since we are still in the extended holiday time, I will continue with a modification of Felix' modified Schott rule:
"Quadruple Schott Rule with max 5 days". This means every player has to wait the amount of hours, four times the amount of his/her previous wins until he or she is allowed to solve the game, but not longer than 5 days.
5 days since today is a Tuesday, giving newer players until noon on Sunday Jan. 4th (CET, GMT+1) before the field opens.
There is no connection to the season in this location, at least as far as I am aware. Just north of here is an unusually clear example of something that I would have liked to include, but the features are just too small even if these are among the only ones visible on a satellite photo. Take a look at them when you have found this location! If this puzzle has not been solved within a week, that will be the first hint.
Find the picture on Google Earth and clearly define it's location (Lat. Long. for example). You will also have to explain the geology on display the best you can.
Edited for clarification on December 31st, post date is still December 30th.
And now, some more pictures. Just because I want to. :)
First the overview, showing the tempting green lagoon. Water this green tends to be laden with silt from glacial runoff, which indicates that the temperature is rarely much higher than freezing. At least that is my experience from many baths in lovely green Norwegian lakes.
Closeup of the parallell ridges, showing the rectangular pattern - polygon ground controlled by linear contrasts.
The "corner" with overlapping ridge directions I suspect that the shape of the boundary between the two sets will be some kind of climate record.
And this is what polygon ground looks like, except that in most cases each "cell" is at most a few meters across. This must have been developing for a long time, much longer that e.g. on Svalbard. The precise mechanism that forms these polygons is subject to speculation, but permafrost is certainly involved.
