19-Feb-2001 -- We went there to visit the geocache at the coordinates! What a hike into the middle of nowhere!
This is by far one of the most difficult caches we have done. I would not
recommend doing it in the summer,
because of the large climb you have to make. With that said, this is also
one of the more beautiful caches we have
ever seen as well. If you go in the spring you will be treated to mountains
with so many wild poppies that from a
distance the mountains appear to have rusted.
This was our second attempt at this particular cache. The first time we
tried to go in from the west, and with
Jason's old junky dodge we made such slow progress on the road and it just
got worse and worse and we decided
that even if we could get to the cache that it would be too dark to even
find it once we got there and it would be
very scary to drive that road in the dark. We have since learned that there
is a section of the road that is impossible
to cross except for jeeps - not 4 wheel drives, jeeps - so we were doomed
from the start. Anyway... we took the
recommended east side route this time and it's not much better of a road,
but good enough to get there in one
piece, unlike the other route. There is one part of the road just is just
before the cache that requires a very good
clearance on a 2 wheel drive and a 4x4 would be recommended for it. I had to
get out of the car so that Jason
would have the necessary clearance to cross it. If you don't cross this
part you can still get to the cache, but it will
add about a mile to your hike each way. I would recommend getting across it
if you can though... it's already quite
a hike and another 2 miles on the total trip would be tough.
Anyway, we got there without problems and started up the mountain, stopping
constantly to take pictures because of
all the wild flowers everywhere. We went up to the left of the peak and
later found that it was the easiest way to go
UP and DOWN. We found the cache in good condition after some wandering
because of poor recepion at the
time. Our GPS was showing that the cache should have been under a large
tree and since it was one of the only
large trees around it seemed the logical place to put it. We ended up
finding it about 25 feet away in the open. After
taking our customary pictures we traded a map CD for a tee shirt and
headed back down. We took back what
looked like the most logical way to return since the way we came would have
required us to climb back up the
backside of the mountain just a bit and we were tired enough that the way
that appears to just go down looked like
a good plan. We found a little too late that the way we had chosen was a
very rocky wash and ended up hopping
from boulder to boulder and ducking trees and bushes the whole way. There
was no clear path at all, and when
we got to the bottom we found we were completely boxed in with thorny trees
and bushes. We ended up having to
use our backpacks to shield ourselves from the stickers and just charging
one of the smaller bushes. It also put us
quite a bit upstream from the location of the good crossing and we ended up
having to make some large jumps to
get across without getting wet. We got back to the truck exhasted, and not
looking forward to the bunpy road
back. I did manage to get all the way back to town to without a display of
a "technicolor yawn". We hit up the
local mcdonalds after being denied in and out burger because of the insane
lengths of the line there. We do
recommend taking food on this cache as it will be an all day event for
sure. All in all it was a very good, fun caching
experience. I highly recommend it!