We had another fun time geocaching this past weekend!
This was my first full weekend without any business at all in a long time.
(Not good really, but, has been a great quarter so I deserve some time off!
;)
We departed the headquarters and offices of Team Ropingthewind at about
6:00am on Saturday morning and headed out for a full weekend of cachin' and
campin'.
We have camped on the Mogollon Rim many times before. But, usually in a
motorhome. So, since we no longer have the motorhome.. tenting it would be
the only way to go! We were hoping to find a spot right on the edge of the
rim with a great unobstructed view of the region below. So, with this in
mind... our goal was to get all the caches that we havent yet been able to
get to along Hwy. 87 and toward Payson. Spend the night on the rim and got
the 3 caches up in that area and then drop down into Pine and Stawberry and
get those.
We left here near sunrise and headed off for the Math Cache. I spent nearly
a week trying to figure out the answer to the math problem so we could save
time and go straight to the final cache location. Even after a couple emails
to my 'math tutor', I never did figure it out! I guess I should have paid
more attention in school! :/ Anyways, we did this one the multi-cache way.
Found the first part quickly and easily and headed off for #2 to find the
final piece of the coords for the cache. Found a number.. but, wasnt feeling
conviced that was it. But, after figuring out where those coordinates would
be... the clues and previous logs 'kinda' convinced us we were in the right
spot. It would be about a 3 mile round trip hike. So, sure wanted to feel
confident we were right. We went for it anyways and found it!
Now, off to Trail's End Cache. This was a fun one! I really liked the 4x4
trail going back to this cache site. There was a couple of forks in the
road, but, the GPS pretty much steered us to the right one each time and had
no problem staying on the correct route. It was rather slow going, but, very
managable for my full size 1974 GMC longbed pickup truck. There were some
really tight turns to negotiate. But, got thru them with very minor AZ
pinstriping. No problem getting to the end of the road and the start of the
hike. Found it! I really liked the views had at the cache site. Very cool.
Nice cache. Now the fun part! As we were headed out my truck hit a good bump
and it stalled. So, I figured I would just let it roll to a stop and then
re-start it. We had already past the really tight turn area and the rest was
fairly wide and just basically a wash. We were still nearly 3/4 of the way
in. I just let the truck roll and it just kept rolling! It is a slight but
steady downhill all the way back to just before the Hwy. So, I just rolled
the truck all the way back to the Hwy! :) No power steering though with the
truck turned off! It was fun. Very quite. No roar of the 455 Olds engine
under the hood! Silent! Very cool. Was able to keep the momentum going in
the soft spots and the turns. It was kinda fun!
Off to the Snow on the Highway Cache. We had tried for this one a few months
back in the dark of night and came out with a no find. This time in the
daylight.. we found it quickly and with no problems. As we were leaving the
cache site, another gent was walking down from the overpass. We didnt think
much of it and made our way back to the truck. We had parked with just a few
hundred feet of the cache site. Once back at the truck, the man walked back
into the trees near the cache. Hhhmm. We though, he could be a cacher. Then
again, maybe he isnt and he saw us at the cache. So, we watched a moment.
After a couple of minutes watching and preparing the GPS for the next cache
up the road, we finally headed out. It turns out it was Dan of Team LazyK!
Sorry Dan! We would really have liked to have met you. We have met alot of
teams along the trails and would have liked to have met ya'. But, we didnt
want to hike back over two barbed wire fences to get back to the cache site.
Also, didnt want to possibly scare you into backing off from the cache when
you saw us coming your way. So, we left. Also, wanted to get moving as there
were more caches to be had!
Next in line was the West Fork Sycamore Cache. Fun drive in on the rough but
totally passable road. Parked within about 300' of the cache. Dang, that was
a very sticky situation! Found it and moved on.
Libby's 188 Rest Area cache was next on the list and found that one quickly
as well. Turns out Dan/LazyK was here just about 40 minutes before us! :)
Team Tres Hombres, Team CHUMP and another team were here too that day! That
is one busy rest area! The Boys Scouts group that the previous logs talked
about were gone and we moved in and out with no problems. My teammate Brent
kept a watchful eye out as I signed the log.
We then went to the cache near Gisela, AZ, Swimming Hole Adventure Cache.
This was a cool cache. We had hiked the north end of this wilderness area,
but, never the south end. So, a new spot visited for us. Had to park nearly
a mile away and hike down to the cache site. It is so cool to see flowing
water creeks and rivers in the AZ desert! The swimming hole looked
inviting.. but, I would imagine it is still a bit cold. Several young folks
were swimming there and they looked cold! That is deep water too! Some cute
women there too! :) :) :) The cache was well away from the activity and the
people, so was able to find it and take our time logging in.
That was about it for the day as we wanted to get up to the rim early and
set up camp and watch the sunset from the rim. Stopped in Payson for a late
lunch/dinner and picked some stuff up at Wal-Mart and made our way up to the
rim. We went for The Meadows Cache while on the way in toward our camping
spot. This sucked. We spent well over an hour searching and posted a no find
on this one. The entire area has been bulldozed. There is a massive logging
operation going on in the area and several large areas of trees are knocked
down. Including right where my GPS put us at the 0 spot. But, I knew it
wasnt there anyways as the pictures indicate it is near the rocks. There is
a little rocky outcropping several hundred feet long to the east of there.
We searched from one end of it to the other very well and couldnt find it. A
lot of trees have been bulldozed over just above here and several were
fallen over the rocks area. We found the rock in question.. no doubt. We
basically decided to just comb the rock outcropping from one side to the
other. We even moved away several small trees to get under them to see if it
was under the fallen trees. We moved every tree and still came up with
nothing. I think a worker may have found it. The bulldozer hasnt done any
tearing up of the rocks. Just above it. So, unless it is covered up with
trees (and I think we moved them all.. literally!), a worker may have
stumbled upon it. That or we missed it. Dont see how though. We found the
rocks in the picture and we looked every possible place a cache container
would go and found several suspect, but, no cache. No find.
Off to our camp site. We camped out right along the rim and had an
unobstructed view from the SE to the SW including the lights of Payson. Very
cool! We camped 2.72 miles from the Rim RR Depot cache. We planned to hit
that one in the morning. A very cold and windy night with a temp in the tent
of 26 degrees! No problem. I was nice and warm in my sleeping bag and
blanket!
Sunday morning and I was sitting in my tent watching the sunrise over the
Mogollon Rim. Beautiful! We sat there and relaxed a bit and started off for
another full day of caching at around 8:00am or so. We parked at the
trailhead above the cache site and just to the west of it. Climbed down the
very steep rim and made it to the cache site. Utilizing both the old and new
coordinates, we searched for well over 30 minutes before Brent finally found
it. We were the first there since it was last found in Nov 2001. Was a
little worried about it's existance. It is still there! I didnt find it at
either of the coordinates. But, probably 30 feet or more from both of them.
Probably just the GPS signal. We signed the log and moved off. We went to
the bottom of that canyon and hiked up the tunnel trail to check out the RR
tunnel. Very cool! Would like to learn some more about the history behind
that. We climbed back up to the Rim Rd above the tunnel. What a climb! This
was a well earned cache, I tell ya'! Alot of steep climbing. But, did so in
a timely manner and we were off for Pine, AZ.
We hit up the Midnight Gossip Gang cache along Hwy 87 headed back toward
Pine. Parked within 300' of it and found that one quickly.
Down in Pine. The Narrows Cache was first. Another great little secret AZ
treasure. Had to search a few minute before my teammate Brent made th
discovery. Another find! Looks like we were on the trail of the Tres Hombres
and Team CHUMP all weekend long at several caches we hit. Looks like they
may have stayed below the rim though. Not sure. Bummer we didnt meet up
somewhere along the way. Maybe another time!
The pine Trailhead cache was a fun one. Another very nice hike. About 3
miles or so round trip. By this time, my teammate was really feeling it and
this was a much slower hike in. He finally had to rest and I went on to make
the find. Found it quickly and logged in. Now, around 4pm or so, we headed
back to Payson for a quick fuel up (us not the truck!) and headed back
toward Mesa.
The Durango Watering Hole cache was still to be had though! :) We had
thought about that one on the way up and decided we would go it on the way
home as we wanted to get up on the rim before dark. Brent was not wanting to
make another long hike this weekend. We had already hiked many long miles on
this weekend and the thought of another 5 or more miles was not good for
him! So, we decided that I would go this one alone and Brent decided to
sleep in the truck and rest while I headed up the trail. This was a pretty
easy hike all in all. Mostly flat. There were some really nice views along
the way. Almost felt like I was in another state while hiking back thru the
trees along the creeks. Another hidden AZ treasure and a spot I had never
been before. Made the 2.5 to 3 mile hike in to the cache around 40 minutes
or so. Spend probably 20 minutes searching before finally finding the
container. The coords are off a bit without a doubt. I agree with Team Sand
Dollar, it is more like 30 feet off the trail, not 75 feet as the cache
description suggests. As I was searching, I went back down to the trail to
re-group and make another hike up the hill. At this time, an older gentleman
was hiking back down the trail. We talked a couple of minutes and I told him
all about geocaching. He is interested and thinks it sounds cool. he had
just hiked the one trail in (trail # to remain nameless here!) all the way
up to FR 201 on top of the divide and back down this trail. He had left at
10:30am this morning. What a hike! Anyways, he wished me good luck on the
find and he went on his way. I went back up the hill this time and found it
quickly! I had walked by it at least 2 or 3 times already! Logged in and
headed out. The sun was down behind the western mountains by now and a
shadow was on the trail and canyon. I went into a 'trail running' pace on
occasion and made good time going out. I met up again with the other hiker
about not quite 1/2 way out and we enjoyed conversation the rest of the way.
Glad to have met him. A nice gentleman. He was able to keep up with me too!
;) We parted ways at the trailhead and me and Brent headed for home. The sun
had pretty much set and it was now 6:40pm. I made the hike in and out in
about 1 hour and 25 minutes. Nice hike. What's another 5 miles of hiking
after all the hiking we did this weekend! ;)
This morning I feel great! A bit sore.. but, feeling great and ready to go
for some more caches! :)
Scott
Team Ropingthewind
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at
http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
(text/plain)