Musings about Geocaching: An incredible day for a hike to a Terracache

The day dawned cloudy and overcast, but 3cd's, dillweed, and I were headed further east, so I hoped the sun would come out to warm up the day from the 50° temperature it was when I left my house.

We met dillweed at the staging area for Hollenbeck Canyon and after she hopped into 3cd's truck, we headed east on the narrow and dangerous Highway 94, driving past the small community of Dulzura, which had been devastated by the wildfire last October. Along the way, we stopped to get a new cache placed by W9JIM, a cacher who has been hiding caches since 2001, including the famous "Mud Cave Cookie Tin."

The small container highlighted an old section of Highway 94 that went around a sharp curve near the flume.

We continued on to Barrett Junction where we turned north and continued on up past the parking spot for "Indiana Ed's" two caches, the "Subterranean Cache" and "Cave of Ghost Waters." I had no idea the road continued up, up, up the way it did and since we had a lot of climbing ahead of us, I was sure glad we drove that extra distance.

The sky was still mostly overcast as we started up the faint trail on the ridge. Our goal was the Terracache at the top of "Skunk Hollow Peak" placed by Akop&Fam last July. It went unfound until T.R. Violin found it a couple of days ago.

The climb was very steep, and if there was a trail, we lost it . . .

The views in all directions were just incredible because of the clouds and filtered light.

From that vantage point, the flume looks like "art."

The poppies that were everywhere on the fire-ravaged slopes were a different species (or subspecies) from the large, bright orange ones we saw several weeks ago in MTRP.

Poppies Poppies Poppies

The flume and the view beyond it

Negotiating the steep hill at the end of the hike was made a lot easier for me using my trekking poles. And, speaking of trekking poles, I found a great site explaining the attributes of them, and how to use them, while browsing the Internet the other day.

This is the profile of our hike. It wasn't as long as some Terracache hikes are, but it sure was steep . . .

It wasn't quite noon when we got back to the truck, so we had time to look for a few more caches out in this area. One was at a cross near Highway 94, the other one was at the turn off the highway onto the spur road that goes to Tecate and the border crossing into Mexico. We got a FTF there on a cache called "BOOM!. This was another new cache placed by W9JIM.

After that we made our way to one of Night Hunter's "Stone Ruination" caches. We were stopped briefly by a border patrolman as we made our way back from that interesting remnant of the past.

On our way back, we stopped to find "Mystery Pools of Potrero Creek." I found the cache back in 2005 when the cache owner was still active in maintaining it. Since then, the cache has been muggled a couple of times and now, it looks like the only thing left is the plastic lid of a replacement container. I hope Radical Geezer will replace the container. It is a cool location, and there is a lot of "history" on the cache page.

It really was a great day and I am thankful to 3cd's for doing all that driving. As the crow flies, Tecate is only 17 miles from my house . . . but driving those winding roads to get there added a lot more miles than that . . .