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| Mojave |
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| by Scott Legal |
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This is an odd article for me to write because
I generally write about my experience on a cache trip or of the experience
that the whole group I was with had on a trip. In this case, the Mojave
desert was crawling with geocachers on Sunday February 8, 2004, but we
were in several different groups. While the underlying reason we were
all there was for an event in Lancaster, my group did not participate
in that event. So begins our version of a day in the desert.
We all arrived at McDonald's in Simi Valley and formed a two car caravan
equipped with two way radios and headed for the desert. Our group consisted
on myself and my son Jeff, Trurokr and his family, Narlsharls and his
son Willithin, and my brother-in-law JoeyBagOfDonuts (don't look for his
posts because he's never logged any). We were passing through Lancaster
and chatting on the radios when we discovered that there were others on
our channel. This turned out to be a very large group of cachers getting
ready to head up to Mojave. We continued on undeterred.
Our first stop was a cache just off the 14 freeway called Dawn14.
I had found this one a month earlier, but figured it was an easy stop
and the other cachers in our group had not found it yet. We were on the
radio when we heard someone else cut in on our conversation. It turned
out to be none other than Ventura Kid. His sage advice was that we should
not look where the cache actually was. He didn't know that I already knew
that the cache was there. Thanks for the advice, Steve. We ran into Paul
and Suzanne (Borgt) at the cache and had a nice chat before getting back
on the road.
Our next two caches were the real reason we were all there. We were headed
for Burro Schmidt's tunnel. I won't give a detailed history of this tunnel
except to say that it was dug by one man through a granite mountain. It
is approximately one-third of a mile long and it took him 37 years to
dig. More importantly, in order to reach the two caches we were headed
for, Burro
Schmidt and South
End of BST, we had to travel through the tunnel. The caches were both
quite easy to find. It was being there that was special. The views were
astounding, the drive was a fun and bumpy 10 mile dirt road and the place
was a western history lesson. It was truly an experience. I doubt if I
would have done it if it weren't for geocaching. As we returned through
the tunnel we had our one and only meeting of the day with the largest
group of cachers combing the desert that day. The group included Team
Dakiba and Ventura Kids, among many others. We ran into them all inside
the tunnel. There was no time to chat as they were on a mission heading
one direction and we were on a mission heading the other direction.
While all of the others in our group will say that Burro Schmidt was the
highlight of their day, mine was the next cache, Shock & Awe. This cache
was actually somewhat on our way back to the 14 from Burro Schmidt. From
the maps we knew it was off of any mapped dirt roads by as much as a half
mile. Based on the curve of the road to Burro Schmidt near the Shock and
Awe cache we could tell that it must be on a hill. We saw the trail and
I wondered if we were going to have to hike up or if we could drive. Then
Trurokr advised me that his vehicle was only two wheel drive, but that
he thought he could make it to the top. Armed with that confidence I figured
I could make it too since my vehicle was all wheel drive. It was an exciting
trip up and an exhilarating trip down. The views from the top were fantastic
with sweeping views of Red Rock Canyon.
Our next cache was a very easy roadside cache called Operation Iraqi Freedom.
There was nothing special about the cache itself, but as we pulled up
we saw that there were two cars parked at the cache already and several
people signing the log. It was our second run in with Borgt. Joining Borgt
for the day were Sr. Hikers and the Pez Cachers. So once again we had
an enjoyable visit.
Up until this point we had been loosely following an itinerary established
by Team Dakiba for the event. Our next cache would be a substantial departure
from the itinerary. The farthest north cache on the itinerary was Operation
Iraqi Freedom. Our next cache was about ten miles north of there. Encouraged
by Campyc, whom we had hoped to meet up with, but who turned out MIA,
we visited The Robbers Roost Cache. While I don't think any of us ranked
this cache as the top cache of the day, it was still one extremely cool
cache. Like Burro Schmidt, the location of this cache has some historical
significance behind its name. The rocky outcropping that the cache is
hidden at was a hiding place of a notorious bandit in the nineteenth century.
We were now inching our way toward the home stretch. We headed down to
Red Rock Canyon where we stopped to find the appropriately named Red Rock
Cache. This was probably the most enjoyable cache for the kids… and Narlsharls.
They all climbed around on the rocks and really enjoyed themselves. We
then headed across the highway to find Campyc's Picture Postcard cache.
I had found this cache over a year earlier, but I'm glad I loaded the
waypoint for the rest of the group. It turns out that Campyc moved the
cache about a quarter mile from its original hiding place and without
the coordinates I never would have known of the move. It also turned out
that we didn't even need a GPS to get to the cache. The long list of geocaching
dignitaries that were combing through the desert that day had all visited
this cache before us. There was one heck of a geo trail to the cache and
Jeff and Skye found the cache before a GPS unit was within a hundred yards
of the cache.
We had one more cache to find before calling it a day. We stopped at the
Ice
Cream Mountains Cache. It was a struggle to find a turn out for this
cache and then a struggle to find the right trail to the cache. We were
heading uphill around a blind corner when I determined that the cache
was down in the canyon below. Everyone took a shortcut and half our group
wound up falling on their butts on the slippery and steep slope we had
to travel down. The cache was found rather quickly, but near the cache
was a tiny hole that marked the opening of a mine shaft. The group did
a little exploring before heading back to the trucks. The name of the
cache is derived from the colorful mountains surrounding the cache. They
literally look like large scoops of ice cream.
This was a very different cache outing for me. We did a significant amount
of off road driving. We achieved the vistas that are the calling card
of some of our more spectacular hiking outings. In the process we visited
some very awesome cache sites. We traveled more in one day than I've ever
traveled for the sole purpose of geocaching (over 300 miles round trip).
I would do it all over again and am even planning my next trip.
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