Kings Peak Day Two

Saturday: To the Peak and Back

Looking up Gunsight Pass	Just below Gunsight Pass

Gunsight Pass	Painter Basin

Almost on top	Kings Peak Utah - GCXMTY

Todd and John	Chris was first to arrive the peak

13,519'	We did it Brother!

The Track

Kings Peak Utah at EveryTrail

Kings Peak Day One

July 2011

Friday: Henry's Fork Camp Ground




Todd at the Trailhead Log, and away we go!

FCWABO First cache with a backpack on	Crossing

Campsite near Dollar Lake	Dollar Lake and a good look at Kings Peak

Desert Caching

Man and Nature

 I-10 just before getting into Palm Desert area. A Earth Cache got me to stop here called "Between ranges" GC1YZEZ did my best to take a photo of me and my gps with the mountains in the back ground. 

There are so many wind birds generating electricity in this area. It is amazing to see them all turning with the natural beauty in the background. Nature and Man working together. I grabbed a couple more along the frontage road by the railroad, then headed on.

Cactus Blooms 

Sun Baked

I took the bike out and road to some desert hides along a pretty good dirt road. Doesn't take long once you get away from the freeway to see the beauty of the desert. 

Father's Day 2011, kids took me on a 8 mile hike in Noble Canyon out by Pine Valley. We kind of started in the middle and hiked up 4 miles collecting 21 caches along the way. The trail is real popular with the mountain bikers. I kept getting in the way.

We saw a few nice size Horned Toads along the way and a really cool Phasmatodea

Level 5?

This was in Walker LA. Nice hide but maybe a level 3 difficulty

Sara Wash - Lake Havasu Arizona

So my brother asks me to meet him in Lake Havasu City to help him move into a new place. So I got to work on looking for a nice hike to take while I was there. Came across a cache called "Crack in the Wall Hike http://coord.info/GC35D4 " hidden in 2002. The hike takes you down the wash or on the trail that parallels the wash until you get to the small canyon.

This is really cool, can you say "127 hours"? Glad I told someone where I was going. It's not that aggressive and there is evidence that plenty people go down this way. The rocks are all smooth from water and at one place someone left a rope to climb down a big one. Well worth the 2 mile hike to the cache. After finding the cache, I too the north trail back and up to Lizards peak. This added to the return distance but well worth the view. There is a cache called "Have a View Havasu http://coord.info/GCFD0" hidden in 2001. i like finding these old ones. From the top of Lizards Peak you can see the Giant Lizard that the locals made out of rocks about 312 degrees and down! There is also a nice place to sit while you rest.





Here is my track.
Sara Wash - Havasu at EveryTrail
EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Arizona

Fuller Falls

Fuller Falls

making the grab

Geocacher

 Well this one was quite the adventure. Rated 2 for difficulty and 3.5 for terrain. It was a beautiful day up by Idyllwild with the snow about 90% melted. We took off from the parking lot with only about a 1/4 mile distance from the cache, but quickly learned the reason for the high terrain rating. The Falls were flowing hard and high, as we entered from on the east side of the creek we ran out of trail, so we continued up about 200' scaling rocks until we could not go any further at the base of the fall.  Garmin told us that we still had over 300' to the GZ and there was nowhere to go but up. Also noted that the arrow was pointing just enough to the west showing us that we were on the wrong side of the creek/falls. So back tracking we went on the side of the rocks until we found a place we could jump the creek. I went first and Geo Hobbit was determined to find her own way across, but finally made the leap after tossing me all the items she did not want to get wet. 

Geo Hobbit

Then is was bush wacking and rock jumping up the hill west of the falls at about a 75 degree grade. No defined trail and rocks covered with dry leaves but we kept the climb going. Nearing the top, the trick was to find a passage over the huge rocks to the GZ. about 100' from the cache, we went past and around the huge rock wall to and came in from behind. We were both pretty tired by now and had to scale down the ace of the rocks to a large flat area closing in on the GZ. But we were too far north of the cache and could only get within 25'. So over another huge rock to another flat area and with reading the hint we were able to find the prize. The cache was not hidden at all, it was all but out in the open. 







Never know what you are going to run into. The find took us a good 2 hours to complete and it was a very satisfying find. We took our rest and drove into town for a nice lunch Then walked on the Ernie Maxwell Trail and found a few more, topped off with a refreshing snowball fight. 
Truly a great Caching Adventure!