[Az-Geocaching] My weekend Geocaching! LONG!

[Scott Nicol]

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.