GeoRoo

Looks as if I lost another one of my hike to caches. GCP565 This really irritates me when self appointed wilderness police don't have a clue. It's these kind of people that are removing caches. First time I've actually had one post about it. Guess he/she couldn't stand to go unnoticed. The cache is located on rock and no time do you bushwack to reach it. The garbage etc. is not being left by geocachers. I hardly doubt 3 cache finds in the past 2 years and a total of 11 in 6 is causing any impact what so ever. That Island has always been a primo camping spot and has seen a drastic decline in people and garbage the past 20 years. There's no nesting ospreys any where close to the cache site. Ospreys are every where now and having camped and fished close by to many they aren't bothered by people. Should I bother contacting Groundspeak? I've always wanted my caches open to every one, but it looks like I'll have to make them Premium if they keep getting stolen. I've quietly replaced a dozen or more the past couple years and have had another dozen replaced by cachers. I appreciate the help as many of mine aren't so easy to reach. If my sick dog is better tomorrow maybe I'll run up and replace this cache and the Trout Lk one that was stolen. :mad:

Not sure who you talked to, but it wasn't me. There's all kinds of camping once you cross the river. The rules and regulations might deter you, but there's private land and Forest Service land in there, so seek that out. After you cross the river there's even a nice DNR campground with tables, outhouses and garbage cans about 2.5 miles in. At least there was 2 years ago. I hardly doubt anything has been removed and would be shocked if you saw anyone. After crossing the river at 3 miles is a large road junction that would be fine for camping. This is all private mining land. There's still several old buildings nearby and a tram station. The book Discovering WA Historic Mines Vol 1 is an excellent resource and must read to learn about the history of this area. With the price of gold going nuts I wouldn't be surprised if the road has been brushed out recently. I'm interested in going, but have prior commitments later in the week. DO NOT think about doing this hike if there's any chance of rain. If it's a decent day plan on getting wet and just forge through the water spots with wading gear. Don't bother fighting it. If you can do an over night then that's the easiest way, but not essential. The extra 4 miles is all easy road walking, so it's doable for a day hike if you are accustomed to off trail travel and don't mind a little suffering. Do the side trip to the old DNR cabin and old growth trees. That's a must see. You'll be hard pressed to find a better example of low elevation old growth in the State. I'll keep a watch on this. Message me if you have any questions. This is a wonderful area to explore, shame it's going down the drain. Loppers and hand saws would certainly help out. Good luck!....

Hi there thanks, I've been a bit out of touch with geocaching the past year, so I didn't know what kind of interest there would be. I'm just getting into the organizing part of the weekend and haven't thought about a CITO event. Do you think there would be interest at this short notice?

This may have already come up on here, so sorry if I'm a little out of touch. Longview Fibre has been granted an emergency road closure to gate the road at the turnoff to FS 62 at Hwy 2 near Index. Gate is still open as of yesterday, but could be closed at any time. This will all but kill any hiking or geocaching in the area. 7 caches isn't much, but it is a wonderful area to hike and it would be a shame to lose. My experience with road closures is once they are closed they rarely open again. If you wish to hike Mt Persis, or Index you'll have to walk an additional 10 miles of logging road and 2200 ft. elevation gain to reach the trail head. I've been in communication with Steve Tift (360-424-2014) the land manager for Longview and Barb Bussey (360-677-2414) Skykomish Ranger station and the main concern is the people shooting and the dumping of trash. The majority of the shooting occurs at a large sandpit, so it's more a knee jerk action that's happening here. If we can force the closure of the gate, then by all means let's do it is what I see happening. Steve is very willing to work with hikers, so there is a silver lining. In a good faith effort by hikers I'm organizing a clean up week end after next. June 27-28th. There is some garbage along the Mt Persis trail, but the majority is below in the valley and side spurs. I was up there the other day checking out how bad it's going to be and was surprised at how little I saw. Not the scary dump truck loads I was thinking. You can read about it here. Mt Persis Clean up You may have seen on the news the clean up effort at Lake Isabel last weekend by hikers and float plane people. That went really well, so I'm hoping to build on that effort while there's interest and everyone hasn't scattered 20 different directions for the summer. If you can help out that would be great. We have permission to spend the weekend there, so I'm going to be camping out for the weekend.

I'm not real happy about what's going on in the Sultan Basin. This has been a fav. area of mine for many years to hike and fish. I have several geocaches that will be affected by an outright ban. DNR and Snohomish County PUD share costs and responsibility for this area. Maintenance has been all but nil for many years and it should be a crime that DNR let all the fine recreation sites go to hell. There's some good info. on the NWHikers forum that Hydnsek linked too. Also 3-4 other ongoing posts about what's happening in the Sultan Basin. I'd suggest using the search function on NWHikers. The DNR is turning over the watershed control to the Sno. Cnty PUD. The PUD is in the process of renewing their 50 year license and from what it appears is very cordial with the public and have no intentions of closing down access. All of the Sultan Basin is either Forest Service land or DNR land with some private mining holdings. This is PUBLIC land and DNR or the PUD can not close off access. One of the requirements for the relicenseing stipulates that public access be provided. At the last PUD meeting several weeks ago the PUD is actively seeking input on how to serve the public, so this would be a good time to get some geocaching input. DNR is notorious for doing what they want and have for years closed off access and restricted use. Recently (last month)DNR dug up the roads to the Boulder Lake trailhead and the one to Static Point. Not just closed the road, but dug up the road bed, removed the culverts and made massive huge berms and ditches. Few people want to hike this nitemare, so in a few years the road will get so overgrown that it will be impossible to hike. The fine trail and hike up to Boulder Lk will essentially go away. Greider Lakes trail is next on the list. The original DNR plan was to shut down and decommission all the recreation sites and close down the entire south shore road by 2011. This would all but close off access to 10,000s of acs of PUBLIC land and most of Spada Lake. When a group of NWHikers became involved and more public input was added DNR backed off from their original plan and said they would reconsider and only close 2 miles of the road and decommission 2 of the recreation sites. One of the long range plans are to build a new trail from where ever DNR decides they want to stop tearing roads up and keep access open to the fine hiking trails of Boulder and Grieder Lks. That's IF money is available. That's a big IF. I have some ocean front property in Arizona I want to sell you too! I don't see how DNR can close down geocaching in the Morning Star NCRA and not the others. This would be a huge blow to geocaching and all but cement their image as the ogre of the federal government. If you haven't been up to the Sultan Basin then get up there ASAP. This is too fine an area to let go. Here's a picture of a huge old growth tree that is just a short 1/2 mile walk. One of the few remaining low valley old growth forests left in W.WA. with trees this size. I was going to place a geocache in there years ago. This would make an awesome interpretive trail, but the road is all dug up now and rapidly getting over grown. Bye bye Sultan Basin.

Give it at least a week before you log it. Often times people are traveling or don't log online every 10 mins,so give it some time. Grabbing it will only complicate the process and won't give credit to the original dropper. I care about the TB's I drop and want to see they are done correctly.

If you go to your local grocery store (Safeway, Albertson's etc) go to the Deli or bakery section and ask if they have empty buckets. They throw them away, so they are more than happy to give you some. Most come with gasket lids. I've been using them for feeders, water carriers etc etc for years. I've done a few bucket caches, but have always been amazed that they've lasted as long as they have. Just way too big IMHO.

Darn, I see I missed this Fire Lookout Challenge cache. I spent 2 months this summer manning Pig Iron LO near Crater Lake. I had a geocache made up and would have placed it if I had known about this cache. I see Illahee and Garwood received caches. They were across the valley from me. Busy with fires most of August-Sept. I had 50 fires burning in my view area in mid August. Excellent roads to Pig Iron, so would be an easy placement and not way up high. (4800 ft) Pig Iron is on the historic register and in excellent condition. I wish I would have had more time to explore the area. Maybe I'll make it back down there next summer.

I have the REI Halfdome 2. It's larger than the quarterdome at not that much more weight. It's been a good bomb proof tent that's held up well in deep snow and winter use. There are doors on both sides with good size vestibules on both side for cooking and gear. I also use a Hennesey Hammock for the other 3 seasons when the weather is warmer. You MUST use some decent insulation under you. Most important part of keeping warm is good insulation under you. I have 3-4 more tents that I don't use much anymore. It's easy to get caught up in the tent mania. There are a lot of good tents out there and a lot of poor ones. REI has always done well in tent making. I have a Eureka Timberline Exp. 4 man tent as my car camping tent and it's held up to Alaska winds and heavy winter snows. You don't need to spend $400-$500 for a good tent. There are plenty in the $150-$250 range. No matter what you buy. Get a bottle of seam sealer and reseal every seam on the tent. Don't bother buying a footprint. That's just a way to suck more money out of the newbies. You can make one from tyvek or 6 mil plastic if you really feel you need one. You don't need one though. I've used many tents over the years and never had a floor puncture.

There's no such thing as Leave No Trace. Everytime we we walk a trail or enter the outdoors we are causing some kind of damage that's visible. Geocaching isn't any more destructive than hiking or many of the other activities allowed in our woods. I'd rather see people enjoying the outdoors than nobody carring. There has to be a give and take and the do gooder enviro people are on a roll. They'll shut down geocaching you watch.

Porcupines eat the bark and cambium layer. They are too lazy to spend days chewing up a tree that bad and there isn't anything that deep other than bugs. The tree isn't rotted enough for a bear to dig like that either. You can see it's been dead less than a year. Woodpeckers are the culprit I tell yeah!.....

Yep, woodpeckers. The upper right shows the beginning of a classic woodpecker hole. Those little buggers can cause a lot of damage. That must have been a very buggy tree. We have a major infestation going on throughout many areas of our state. One reason why so many trees are coming down in the storms we've been having. I've lost 4-5 big hemlocks, doug fir and almost all of my big alders to bark beetles. I cut down a 100 ft. hemlock a couple weeks ago and it was riddled with woodpecker scars like your picture. Not near as large, but very similar. Take a trip up to BC and you'll be shocked at the 1,000s of acs of dead pine trees killed by the pine beetle. It's working it's way south and much of the N. half of E.WA is at risk. Woodpecker heaven isn't too far off.

I have 2 new ones that I put out the other day while camping on the Miller River. Both are snowshoe/xc ski accessable and hidden with snow in mind. GC18RM3 GC18RME I snowshoed into my Mohawk Falls and Mine GCMMED and updated the cords and checked on the cache. It's very doable in a heavy snow year and is protected by a over hanging cliff and hide location. There's 5-6 ft. of snow in the area, so an excellent time to get out for a snow shoe with zero avalanche danger on the road. If anyone is looking for a river side snow camping spot I have a good area cleared out to the river about 1.5 miles up the Miller River Rd. The Miller River Group campground would make a great camping spot too. Or at the turn around at the end of the plowed road. No passes are required.

I see a new Lucy and Rickie snowshoe cache was approved earlier today off the Mtn Loop. I grabbed a 50 cal can and a lok n lok, so I might put out a snowshoe cache in the next few days somewhere around Skykomish. I'm camping on the Miller River rd right now and there's about 3-5 ft. of snow in here. I had to dig out the road from a couple weeks ago to reach the camping spot. If anyone is looking for a good place to snow camp and snow shoe, drop by and say hello. I'll be here for the next 3-4 days. I'm up about 1.5 miles on the Miller River Rd. Big grey tarp shelter on the river.

My Osprey Island cache that PP mentioned would not be a good snowshoe cache unless you wanted to walk 8 miles and dig down about 8 ft. The Miller River Rd is only plowed about 4 miles. I'm going up there tomorrow to snow camp for 3-4 days, so it's a great place to snowshoe. It's possible to reach the island in spring when the trail is melting out and the lake is still snow/ice covered. With all the snow we have this winter I'd say that won't be happening till about June. I'd caution everyone to be extremely careful this year as we've had an exceptional amount of low elevation snow and record deaths in avalanches. Many of my caches can be done in a normal winter, but none were setup specificaly as a snowshoe/winter cache. Be careful out there. Edit: I see a group was trying to find the cache off the Smithbrook Rd. I was there snowshoeing the next day in bright blue skies and stopped off and pondered the freeway track going off in the direction of the cache. I had thought of going after it, so glad I didn't try. That was some of the deepest powder I've ever seen. The road was like hiking up a deep ditch. My hats off to the ones breaking trail in the direction of the cache! Also, my Skyline Ridge caches are buired way down deep with exception of Skyline the Top. That's the only one that gets blasted by wind and any possibility of reaching. I'd say that one isn't doable either and the avalanche danger is too high under most conditions. Don't go near that one unless the avi conditions are very stable.

Are you so sure it was vandalism? We had some wicked winds recently and it's possible they went flying. The snow levels are dropping to 1,500 ft. by Monday with 6-8 inches tonight and tomorrow, so it might be a tough go from here on out.

Runhills, it wasn't my intent to stir the pot over Terracaching. I'm a member, but have only looked at the site a few times. Don't even know if I've logged a cache. I get the updates on new Terracaches, so was using that as an example. The cache I saw was in the Enchantments, so that made me go hmmmmm. There are recent wilderness geocaching.com caches and Enchantment ones too, so sorry if It looked like I was picking on Terracaching. Yes, it's a Groundspeak issue. If wilderness areas are off limits then post that on the website or at least make it apparent that they need to contact a land manager to seek approval. Seems pretty simple to me as this isn't anything new. From the bulletins I read it's been in the works for the past 2.5 years by the wilderness.net group.

The key word here is policy. From what I can see there is no written policy anywhere within the Forest Service that addresses geocaching or for that matter geocaching.com. Individual land managers have taken it upon themselves to make policy on their own. They are using the 1964 definition of "caching" as a go around. Is it even legal to add GEOCACHING in bold type to the Wilderness rules and post them at trailheads? To me that's a bit disturbing considering geocaching is a non issue in any wilderness areas around our state. If you were to catalog the finds of wilderness caches it would amount to a very low percentage of cache finds. Very very low. That's beside the point. I don't like a private group going out of their way to single out any public use or action. Policy is being distributed by a private organization. www.wilderness.net What Team Misguided quoted is directly off their Forest Service Desk Guide for Managers and almost a direct quote from the wilderness manager I spoke with, so they are looking at this site. I'm all for protecting and preserving our wilderness areas and in favor of adding more. When it comes down to excluding only the elite few then I'll be up in arms. Our state has gone out of their way to shut down, block and rule out any access or use in many areas. I see it everyday. Maybe it's time that geocaching.com stuck their foot in the door and made a presence and not stand by passively. I only say that because I don't see anything on the geocaching.com website addressing the Wilderness areas. Im sure they are working with land managers, but the ones I talked to didn't have a clue. Sorry to rant and rave again, but maybe this will stir the pot and get something on the website and take the burden away from our over used reviewers. They do a wonderful job and my hat goes off to them.

Thank you for all your effort. Yeah, the 50 cal cans are just a bit too big. I placed 2 hike in caches this week and the 50 cal cans fit in my day pack, but just barely. I had a hard time finding a big eough cubby hole to place them. I had sand in both of my 50 cal cans when I opened them to clean, so it was kinda weird thinking that I might have a little piece of Iraq. Keep me on the list for 30 cal cans. Lets hope the supply of cans dry up real soon.

Nothing that I can see either. If anything a geocache would be less intrusive as it's hidden. Most summit registers are easliy seen and found. Geocache could be monitored from their comfy office, so any abnormal use would be apparent. Getting them to understand this is fruitless though. Unless you can talk to an active cacher within the FS I don't see anything good happening. Anyone know a FS geocacher?.....I have (2) "summit registers" waiting to be approved. I guess there isn't any problem with Terracaching as I see a brand new cache in the ALW. So is Terracaching exempt from the radar? Why isn't there a mention of that activity or a link to their website on the Wilderness website? I haven't gotten into terracaching yet, but from what I know it's geared more towards outdoor hiking type caches. Maybe I'll have to take a closer look.......

How's this for you! I placed a 50 cal cache at almost the same cords as MG's the day before he placed his, but did not submit it before MG got his in. What are the chances of that happening? Maybe a city micro or a city park, but way out in the middle of cacheless country miles N. of Wintrop on a hike too cache? I suppose the protocol is who ever gets it submitted first and approved. Now I have 3 caches to remove!.....I'm not having very good luck lately. Maybe I should look at Terracaching.

I ran into the same road block while trying to get several caches approved in the Goat Rocks wilderness. When I spoke to the ranger he told me outright that it was illegal to place a geocache. When I questioned him about what policy forbid this he said he would have to get back to me. I then spoke to a wilderness manager later that day and she told me the 1964 wilderness act gave them the rules to enforce an outright ban on geocaches. She told me geocaches are treated as garbage and removed if found. Even though she hadn't ever found or removed a geocache in her district. She then quoted the same management bullitin that Team Misguided quoted. That's a Wilderness directive that came out about 2.5 years ago. If you read that bullitin you will see they are fine with virtual caches and will work with the geocacher. That wasn't my experience and since virtual caches haven't been allowed in years seems to me they are behind the times by quite a bit. She also told me they are working with geocachers to remove wilderness caches, but couldn't tell me one she had worked with. Since there are no current geocaches in the Goat Rocks wilderness and very few in the whole Gifford Pinchot district I she was blowing smoke. What hydensek quoted is correct. The Wentatchee NF has an outright ban on geocaches and they quote in bold type GEOCACHES are not allowed. This is a direct add on to the the 1964 law. Since this is not legal POLICY then it's a direct discriminatory act against geocaching in my eye. When I questioned the wilderness manager about summit registers, climbing gear that's left. etc etc, she told me that summmit registers are ok because they've been there before 1964. PLEASE, how many summit registers have you found that are over 40 years old?....zero that I've logged. If you read farther into what Team Misguided quoted then you will see that it warns about the possible damage to sensitive areas, that geocaches in hike too areas are very popular and that they should be discouraged. That's an outright falsehood!.....the hike too geocaches are by far the least sought after of all our caches. We have a self regulatory process setup already, so we as a group would cause far less damage than other groups. My Nannie LO cache is near a burned out lookout with all kinds of debris, nails, concrete, globs of glass. When I asked about this I was told the LO was burned down by the FS. This is not a pristine wilderness area in my book. Having a cache there would not subject the area to further damage. If anything it would clean the area up. When I told her about how much the geocachers do for litter pickup she said that's fine it's a FS issue. I have no problem working with FS people and establishing rules and guidelines for geocaching, but when they come forth and single out geocaching over other uses that cause much more damage to the environment it's not right. Our sport has just as much right to use OUR public lands as long as it's done in a controlled manner. They have this attitude that geocaching is evil and has to be stopped at all costs. There will be hoards of geocachers dissending on our wilderness areas. That's almost a direct quote! I'd like to see some policy written, cooporation and not just knee jerk attitudes. The wilderness laws were written long ago and to tack on geocaching as a sidenote is flat out wrong. They see the "caching" as a easy way to include geocaching. Single out the other users, climbers, etc and then I wouldn't have a problem. Sorry for my ramble I'm checking in via wi-fi from my camping spot near Wintrop.

Darn, I was in that area last week, so wish I had known about the new one. What's the elevation?

LOL, I thought they would have found dozens of McD toys. Darn they only found pictures!......Guess I won't be going.

If anyone up my way (Monroe) wants to swap some 50 cal cans for 30, I have 13 50 cal cans. The 50 cal cans are in excellent shape. They are a bit too big to be backpacking in and tough to hide in some areas.