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| Author: chaosmanor |
| Message Title: Some interesting cache treks |
| Message #: 7840 |
| Post Date: 4/12/2010 3:19:27 PM |
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Many of you know that I love the Mojave Desert and will take almost any opportunity to spend time out there. Recently, I've gone on several great desert caching trips with Let's Fly and Webfoot (a friend in Claremont) and I thought that it might be worthwhile mentioning them, as right now the western Mojave is a marvelous place to visit, and there is a lot of caching to be done.
A few months back, Webfoot, his younger son, Tadpole95, and I did the Big Smiley Series north of Victorville. We hiked the entire thing; it's a mile across, so it's a bit over 3 miles in circumference. There are 26 caches, counting the Mystery cache (The Smiley Series: GC1JERK), and we hiked about six miles on mostly flat ground, in one day. The hides tend to get a bit monotonous, but the scenery is constantly changing. Get off I-15 on the *Second* Stoddard Wells Road offramp north of Victorville, and head NE. There is a decent side road that takes you to within 100 feet or so of a cache, and then it's up to you if you want to walk, or look for dirt roads.
A few miles farther up Stoddard Wells Road is the Groundspeak Series: a mile in *radius*, so over six miles in circumference, with a half-dozen caches in the middle, and a Mystery cache as well: GC24C8W. There is also a "bonus" cache on the top of a ridge to the north of the circle. This series is more varied in cache type and scenery, but it is also a very popular OHV area. It took Webfoot and I two days to (mostly) hike this series; we wound up driving to a few of the caches, but as we used a street vehicle, we literally could not drive to most of the caches. We met four guys out there who hiked most of the series in one day, plus drove as close as they could to the bonus and then hoofed it. We were in awe of that accomplishment :-D
Richard and I drove up to the Burro Schmidt Tunnel area last Fall, and had a blast there. The tunnel is really cool (literally and figuratively), the view from the other side is spectacular, and there are a number of other caches in the area, some of which we got. North of there is the Fossil Falls area, and the BLM has really upgraded the facilities since I was last out that way more than a decade ago. There are caches at a couple of overlooks east of Little Lake; this whole area was either off-limits or required 4WD, but now almost any street vehicle can get out there. Not a lot of hiking to caches, except for the one at the bottom of the Falls, but the scenery and geology are top notch.
And I would be remiss if I did not mention the wealth of good hiking and caching opportunities in the Los Padres NF north of Ojai. I went out with my sister a few weeks back and hiked on the Sespe River Trail, which runs east from the end of Rose Valley Road. We also hid three new ones past the then-farthest cache. A week or so later, a couple of other cachers got those three and hid six more of their own. I went out with Richard and a couple of others on Saturday; we got all of the caches from the TH to the farthest east, then his eight more past that :-) Not to be outdone, yet more Ojai cachers went out yesterday to get our new ones, but to also hide yet more. The string of caches on that trail is now about five miles long, and it is but one of over a dozen good trails, of all types and difficulties, in the Santa Ynez Mountains, on either side of the 33. And right now is a great time to go out there; by the end of June, the temperatures will probably be in the 90s, and hiking will be a lot more difficult. So go find a trail and hike it! |
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