Musings about Geocaching: 2007-12-23

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

A fun day of hiking on the ATT (Anderson Truck Trail)

The day started in Rancho San Diego when dillweed and fisnjack picked me up. From there, we drove to Peutz Valley Road where we met up with 3cd's, my frequent hiking partner that I haven't been hiking with for the past few months. We sort of hoped to get some FTFs on the new caches, but another cacher was ahead of us on his mountain bike. We did finally catch up to him so we got a couple of FTFs further down the trail when we took a shortcut that the mountain bike could not make. Heck, I had a hard time climbing that steep hill myself.

I got a few pictures as we hiked along the trail. From one point, I found a good view of the reservoir.

This area burned in the October 2003 wildfire, but it is slowly recovering from that devastaion.

In the canyons, there were Sycamore trees adding fall color to the views.

In that peaceful location, we stopped for a little while and I got a picture of my companions, all of them except for Teddie the dog who was over playing in the small pool of water that crossed the trail.

After our hike, we stopped for a couple of caches as we made our way back to the original meeting place and my car, parked at the Edwards 15 parking lot in Rancho San Diego. It was another very fun day and I'm grateful to dillweed for doing the driving today.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Horsethief Canyon is open for hiking again!

Whoooo Hoo!! The Horsethief Canyon area is back open again. I got a log yesterday that someone DNF'd "Hopeful Tree," so I decided to take off on this absolutely gorgeous and warm Christmas Eve Day to hike that very familiar trail.

I took a bunch of pictures because it was such a clear day, although the solid blue sky was a bit boring. Here is a picture of the hopeful tree with the location of "Elevation 3000" in the background.

And, here are a couple of pictures of the hopeful tree.

After all the recent rains, there are pools of water inside the tree.

The weather was absolutely perfect for this hike, but just after I visited the Hopeful Tree and replaced the missing container with a new container, I felt a bit tired, and shaky. I ate some of the wonderful dried mango pieces I get at Trader Joe's and continue on towards a bradybunchboy's cache. I thought I could find it without the coordinates, but didn't have any luck, so I made my way to their "Hundred Hides in Horsethief" cache where I was surprised there was no water in the pool. After the recent rains, I was certain there would be water again.

I took a picture of one of the morteros. Maybe I'll post it to the "Ancient Evidence" category I own on Waymarking . . .

This is the environment where the Native Americans sat and ground the acorns while listening to the creek flow in the background.

I dropped off this cute, and scary, T.B. at that cache. I sure hope someone comes along to rescue him soon . . .

After leaving the cache, I found the trail on the east side of the creek, and this time, found the other bradybunchboy cache easily. I checked it and dropped off another T.B. in that container. From there, I had to bushwhack to get back to the trail. Good thing there wasn't any water in the creek today, or I really would have had to backtrack . . .

The light in the canyon, on this Christmas Eve Day, was beautiful since the sun was so low in the sky, even at mid-day.

When I got back to the car, I checked the distance on the GPSr before turning it off. Then, when I saved the days tracks on the computer after I got home, I was surprised the distance was very close this time, although with the wandering around I did, I thought I covered more distance than the tracks recorded . . . Oh well. Here is the screenshot of my tracks with the profile.

It was sure a fantastic day and I enjoyed getting out and getting some exercise, something I can do again, now that I am finally feeling better and have rejoined the land of the living.