A wonderful evening hike to find two caches
After the flurry of new caches were placed in the Horsethief/Valley Pillar area of the National Forest northeast of my house, things have quieted down quite a bit. For a while it has been too hot to make any daytime hikes to the area, but the four-mile distance of this hike is perfect for an evening hike.
We started out parking down near the Fire Station at a bit after 5:00 p.m. Although I don't recommend that as a parking place on my cache pages, when we saw a fireman on the road and asked him if the vehicle was okay, he said, "Sure." They have done a bit of clearing right there next to the big green gate, so we just walked through that area this time, instead of having to squeeze around the narrow opening between the gate post and the big shrub on the other side.
Our first stop was at my little cache, "Slow and Steady," which is the best way to do the rest of the caches on our agenda for the evening. The container is melting in the summer heat, which is why I put it where I put it, close to the parking for easy maintenance.
The view was beautiful in the warm evening light.
We continued down the backside of the rockpile to get to fisnjack's cache "In Between," in between of which caches I'm still trying to figure out . . . CTYankee9 was looking south of the cache location, so when he finally found it, after a little hint, we took new coordinates, which, turned out to be less than six feet different. However, the micro cache is hidden in a rockpile, and gratefuldad116 did DNF it, which I think is why Chuy! put a little "duck" on top of the rock that hides the cache.
From there we headed down to one of my caches, then up to the saddle to another one of my caches that has this great view of Barrett Lake.
While CTYankee9 was signing the log, I felt a burning sensation on my thigh. By the time I figured out a red ant had somehow traveled up my pant leg and was biting me, he had gotten me good . . . twice. Boy, did that hurt.
The pain might have distracted me a bit from the effort of climbing up to the peak to my cache, "Hard Hike, Easy Find" because it sure seemed like we got to the top quickly.
We took pictures of the RJTB before it went into the cache.
And, then I took a picture of the view from under the over-handing rock towards the north.
The sun went down as we walked across the top of the peak, but I got one picture of CTYankee9 lounging in the sunset light on a "lounge chair" which is close to where I hid my second Terracache.
We found one more cache on top, then took a very steep way down to get us closer to the last cache CTYankee9 needed to find, Harmon's "Waddle up a Widdle Hill," which might get the award for WORST.CACHE.CONTAINER.EVER. LOL.
I almost made it back to the vehicle without needing a flashlight, but my night vision isn't the best. CTYankee9 handed me his very cool flashlight that provided lots of light -- I gotta get me one of those.
We hiked just over four miles in four hours which isn't bad considering we stopped to find several caches and we were not walking on a trail most of the time. The profile of the hike has an intersting shape:
It wasn't too warm during the hike, but the brisk breeze when we were up on top sure was welcome. It will be a while before any one else visits those caches — except for the people who will rush out there to retrieve the Geocoin I dropped off and the Red Jeep CTYankee9 dropped. It will be interesting to see who does the retrieval. I sure hope the cache is remote enough that the coin and the jeep do not get picked up by the thief and that they are able to continue on their travels as intended.
We started out parking down near the Fire Station at a bit after 5:00 p.m. Although I don't recommend that as a parking place on my cache pages, when we saw a fireman on the road and asked him if the vehicle was okay, he said, "Sure." They have done a bit of clearing right there next to the big green gate, so we just walked through that area this time, instead of having to squeeze around the narrow opening between the gate post and the big shrub on the other side.
Our first stop was at my little cache, "Slow and Steady," which is the best way to do the rest of the caches on our agenda for the evening. The container is melting in the summer heat, which is why I put it where I put it, close to the parking for easy maintenance.
The view was beautiful in the warm evening light.
We continued down the backside of the rockpile to get to fisnjack's cache "In Between," in between of which caches I'm still trying to figure out . . . CTYankee9 was looking south of the cache location, so when he finally found it, after a little hint, we took new coordinates, which, turned out to be less than six feet different. However, the micro cache is hidden in a rockpile, and gratefuldad116 did DNF it, which I think is why Chuy! put a little "duck" on top of the rock that hides the cache.
From there we headed down to one of my caches, then up to the saddle to another one of my caches that has this great view of Barrett Lake.
While CTYankee9 was signing the log, I felt a burning sensation on my thigh. By the time I figured out a red ant had somehow traveled up my pant leg and was biting me, he had gotten me good . . . twice. Boy, did that hurt.
The pain might have distracted me a bit from the effort of climbing up to the peak to my cache, "Hard Hike, Easy Find" because it sure seemed like we got to the top quickly.
We took pictures of the RJTB before it went into the cache.
And, then I took a picture of the view from under the over-handing rock towards the north.
The sun went down as we walked across the top of the peak, but I got one picture of CTYankee9 lounging in the sunset light on a "lounge chair" which is close to where I hid my second Terracache.
We found one more cache on top, then took a very steep way down to get us closer to the last cache CTYankee9 needed to find, Harmon's "Waddle up a Widdle Hill," which might get the award for WORST.CACHE.CONTAINER.EVER. LOL.
I almost made it back to the vehicle without needing a flashlight, but my night vision isn't the best. CTYankee9 handed me his very cool flashlight that provided lots of light -- I gotta get me one of those.
We hiked just over four miles in four hours which isn't bad considering we stopped to find several caches and we were not walking on a trail most of the time. The profile of the hike has an intersting shape:
It wasn't too warm during the hike, but the brisk breeze when we were up on top sure was welcome. It will be a while before any one else visits those caches — except for the people who will rush out there to retrieve the Geocoin I dropped off and the Red Jeep CTYankee9 dropped. It will be interesting to see who does the retrieval. I sure hope the cache is remote enough that the coin and the jeep do not get picked up by the thief and that they are able to continue on their travels as intended.
posted by Miragee at
11:54:00 AM
10-Day Forecast
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