AZcachemeister's instructions are good. The station is only open
Monday-Friday so you need to get the pass on a weekday. The Tonto pass
can be picked up at a number of places in Mesa before you get out there.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/tonto/tp/vendors.php?city2=Mesa
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/tonto/tp/index.shtml for info on the pass.
You will probably want one anyways as there are a number of caches in
the area where a pass would be proper to have.
When you take the road into bulldog canyon, there are some caches right
by the road. If you park at the closest point to the GC57 cache, you
will have about a .6 mile hike.
If you go, please take a fresh logbook out with you as the (according to
the GC.com logs) is getting pretty full.
This is a cache well worth the effort to get. Nice hike, beautiful
views, historic cache. Enjoy your day!
AZcachemeister wrote:
> The answers:
>
> Plenty of room to park at the gate on the Bush Highway. The usual
> caveats apply regarding roadside parking. You can get the combination to
> the lock by acquiring a Bulldog pass at the Mesa Ranger station, it's
> free! The Mesa ranger station is at N33° 26.915 W111° 43.255.
> As I recall the road was in pretty good condition, and should be
> traversable in a normal-clearance vehicle. Hard to say what it is like
> today. I'm sure you could at least get your vehicle far enough off the
> main road to minimize the chances of a break-in.
>
> The Bulldog pass is only needed to open the gate, and drive a vehicle in
> the area. You can hike or bike without one. I'm not sure if the new
> 'Tonto Pass' is needed to park by the roadside here or not. Since it is
> not really 'an improved site', I don't think so.
>
> Typical open desert. Lots of cacti and shrubs. The terrain is rather
> gentle, but there are a few washes to cross.
>
> Definitely a worthy cache for a milestone find!
>
>
> Mark, Johnny, & Joaquin wrote:
>
>> We are quickly approaching the 1000 club and want to make Geocache
>> (GC57) http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=87 our 1000th.
>>
>> We are heading down to the valley on Wednesday and are looking to walk
>> to the cache and pick it up before we head back to the hills. We really
>> need to warm up a bit as winter is normal this year.
>>
>> All we really know is that it is south of the Bush Hwy down a wash
>> complex in the Bulldog Canyon area. We see that there area Jeep trails
>> in the area (using National Geographic AZ TOPO) but we are not bringing
>> the Potbellied_Pig this time, just the family KIA.
>>
>> That is really all we know. So we have questions.
>>
>>
>> The questions:
>>
>> Are there places to park off the Hwy?
>>
>> Do we need some day pass to park like Sedona?
>>
>> Is it typical open desert to the cache?
>>
>>
>> Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. We don't even have maps
>> of the area and will be just going by what we have put in our GPSR using
>> our Topo 2008 on our GPSr.
>>
>> Thanks to all for help on the last question we had and to all who will
>> likely help us with this one. This is a great board and a wonderful
>> resource. We appreciated all the desert dwellers giving us a hand like
>> this.
>>
>>
>>
>
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