littleamerica

I was just thinking about this subject this morning, as I reached under the edge of a large stuccoed structure in a public place to feel around for a fuzzy bison. I've lived in Northern New Mexico for ten years (and three months) now, and I've seen a grand total of two rattlesnakes (one sleeping, the other very much awake) and one black widow spider. We're light on mosquitoes too.

I'm heading to Sydney at the end of next week. If anyone has travel bugs that need to go to Australia please drop me a line at littleamerica (at) gmail (dot) com.

This weekend I found a pack of cigarettes (containing one cigarette). On three or four occasions I've found one-dollar casino chips (or tokens, or whatever they're called). Near Dillion, Colorado I found a condom (unused) in a cache. And in a cache in the Pecos I recently found a small empty liquor bottle. No porn, drugs, guns, or liquor so far. Maybe I've just been getting to the caches too late.

Thanks for the picture. That doesn't look so fearsome. I was afraid it was going to look like some of the Organs near Las Cruces -- sharp pointy things with vertical sides. If I read the picure correctly, it looks more like some of the mountains (Madgalenas?) near the Texas line to the east -- uplifts of coral or some other none-too-hard stuff that may be fine for scrambling but wouldn't be much fun for climbing. Do the trees and scrub go all the way to the top? In the picture they look like they do.

I might suggest something along the lines of "stay off the forums; you'll enjoy geocaching more." But that's a little heavy-handed.

The proposals I've seen are all very linear; micro/small/regular/large is just way too linear. I'd like to propose something along the lines of the following classification, which immediately yields an alphabetical code I know everyone will agree is nice: A - Almost B - can be Broken in pieces C - goes well with Candles D - glows in the Dark E - belongs to the Emperor F - holds Fast G - can be hidden in the Ground H - one-Half the expected size I - can be verified Independently J - used to contain Jelly K - safe for children L - distinguised by its Lustre M - Mostly; possibly Marine N - not visible at Night O - Orange or possibly Other P - easily distinguishable from a Primate Q - not easily classified R - upRight S - lying on its Side T - lid should be Tight U - unused V - Vanished W - usually found With something else X - made of at least two distinct pieces Y - made of exactly three distinct pieces Z - involving the passage of time I hope this helps.

Yes. I assembled it myself from organic, free-range bits of the highest available quality. Thank you for asking.

Reading this thread I get the distinct impression that there are no perfect caches. The easy ones can be too easy, the hard ones too hard, the urban ones common, the rural ones too remote. If anyone would like to recommend a perfect or near-perfect cache I'd love to hear about it.

Neither one, unless they signed the log. And it would only count as a "team find" for the bomb squad.

There's kind of a continuum between caches where reception is poor at the cache site and caches where the GPS is useless altogether. Those are hairs I'm not eager to split. I suppose it would be sensible to enforce a kind of purity regarding the need to use a GPS, but I don't think that's possible with the current review/approve structure.

Caches tend to get easier when early finders post spoilers, even if the spoilers are really mild. Tough caches tend to invite spoilers in log messages.

Hit sign, win suit.

Here they are, radiating out from the center of my zip code (87544), which I'm using as a proxy for my home coordinates: CWA7076 (2.5/2) (GCKFKZ): A trad cache requiring a short but circuitous hike along a mesa top. This one is three days old. Gertchie Birdie's Otowi Mesa Cache (3.5/3.5) (GC2630): Requires a five-mile hike to reach a cache on a mesa top. May require some Class 3 scrambling on tuff and pumice. May technically be on Indian land, due to a recent land transfer. the bean (2/4) (GCKEHC): A memorial to the placer's cat. A week old. Bayo Butte Overlook (3.5/3.5) (GC29CD): Due to a recent land transfer this cache is now on the San Ildefonso reservation. A recent note says it is behind a well-marked fence. It should probably be archived, but the cache owner hasn't visited gc.com in five months and so is probably unaware or unconcerned. The JS Bach Cache (4/3.5) (GCG6KZ): I DNF'd this several months ago, and there's been one reliable find since then. I'll probably wait until the leaves are off the cluster of scrub oak rumored to be hiding the cache, since this turns out to be a substantial trek and would put me pushing dark if I tried to do it after work. Mine View Mesa-Top Cache (1.5/4) (GCK425): This cache is six weeks old, and requires a four-mile hike with a scramble onto a mesa top. I should probably do this one soon, since the land it is on may be transferred to the Indians as well. Bandelier Nat'l Monument (2/1) (GCJ1YP): A two-stage virtual multi inside a fee area at the far end of a substantial drive. I'm not especially interested in visiting the monument again any time soon, so since this one is in all likelihood durable it'll probably wait until it's the closest to home. Obsidian Ridge Cache (1.5/1.5) (GC86A3): A five-mile hike in the Dome Wilderness. This one has been visited twice this calendar year. This Ain't the Big Easy No Mo'! (3/1) (GCGEP2): The fifth is a series of linked trad caches that should have been a single multi. I've done the first three and the fourth has gone missing. The cache owner has not been responsive to email from others. Trials Cache #2 (2/3) (GCJKPX): I've DNF'd this one once, and need to try it again the next time I head out into the Jemez. Second-to-the-Last Dome Road Cache (2.5/1)(GCGEP0): The missing fourth cache in the Dome Road series. I've got the coordinates for this one, but I'm not going to try it until someone else finds it. I suspect it has vanished and should be archived or replaced. I've been tempted to bootleg this cache and the final one in the series, but doing so kind of goes against my sense of fair play. Rancho de la Canada (1/3) (GCG41N): An Altoids box on a Jeep road. Since I have a low-clearance car I'll probably mountain bike this one. It is in a warm area, and can wait until winter. Has been found twice this calendar year. Another 'Brick' in the Wall, Part 4 (2/1) (GCGFFEC): An Altoids cache on a Jeep road. Amalgam (2.5/3) (GCFB20): The regular-sized cousin of the cache above; they should be done on the same trip. Balancing Rock (2/4) (GCHBHQ): Another cache in the Bland mining district which should be done on the same trip as the two above. East Fork Escape (2/2) (GCGAZB): An easy cache on a nice hike along the east fork of the Jemez River. I did a couple of its neighbors several weeks ago, and I would have done it too if I hadn't accidentally deleted all my waypoints at an inopportune moment. Camel Rock (1/1) (GC8C59): The only true virtual in the bunch, this involves visiting an oddly-shaped rock on Indian land and counting the spikes present/missing in a wall. The rock itself has been mostly inaccessible for several months due to road construction on nearby US 285. If my life depended on it I could probably jump the Jersey barrier and bag this one, but I'll probably just wait until the picnic area in front of the rock reopens. 4x4 Lunch (3/2) (GCGMER): A pickle jar on a Jeep road. This one hasn't been found in over a year. One DNF was posted last month. This one's a really low priority. Nature's Symphony (1.5/3) (GCG8A9): This one will require a six-plus-mile mountain bike ride down a somewhat rough forest road, but it's on the way to a very nice primitive hot spring, so I'll probably save it until October or November, after the Forest Service closes the road to motorized vehicles. Jemez Goblin Rocks (2/3) (GCAC41): A ten-to-twelve-mile mountain bike ride, at least, down an unfamiliar Jeep road. Unlike some of the other caches in the area, this one looks solid, having been visited five times this Spring/Summer. Analysis: Two easy urbans or near-urbans, two virtuals, one maybe two on Indian land, two DNFs, two that have been for all intents abandoned, three or four nice hikes. The rest appear to involve substantial time on Jeep roads. I hope to get half or so of these done over the course of the next three months. The rest are difficult enough to reach for uninteresting reasons that I'll probably do a bunch of easier caches in the Albuquerque area, a bunch of locationless caches, or maybe a day-long visit to cache-poor Taos before I'll try to tackle them. Note the complete absence of puzzle caches or crypto caches. Geocaching in central northern New Mexico is a more-brawn-than-brains activity.

I'm in cache-thin (but not very thin) northern New Mexico. I go geocaching mostly as a sidelight: I think of myself more as a hiker than as a geocacher, but I try to combine the two when I can. I've found that geocaching is often a good way to get to know a new town; the local geocachers tend to place caches in interesting places. I've done trips to Silver City and Farmington, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona, and Lynchburg, Virginia, and in each case I've learned things about the town I don't think I would have ever learned without having a cache to find. So far my favorite caches are the Boston Hill cache near Silver City, the Grotto cache near White Rock, New Mexico, and the Off World cache in Flagstaff. I'm not a paid member; I'll probably become a paid member when I get to two hundred or two hundred and fifty finds. I don't spend much time in the forums; I'm a veteran of another long-lived online community, and I'm disappointed but not surprised to see the same sort of dysfunction here that I saw there: too many posters read the words of others unsympathetically, and too many people are unwilling or unable to just live and let live. I have to hope everyone eventually outgrows this kind of behavior, but not because I think it's likely.

The Google results for "bissextile" are here. Hope this helps. I would have expected that it would have something to do with distributions; for example, if you break up a population by rank order into one hundred groups, each individual in that group lives in a centile. Likewise "decile" for ten groups. I would expect a sextile to be a group within a population broken into six groups. By extension something bissextile would straddle two neighboring sextiles, maybe. Of course, that turns out to be entirely wrong. That's where the Google results some in handy.

I'll sometimes watch a cache where I've left a travel bug as an indirect way of checking the health of the bug. If several people post finds for the cache without mentioning the bug I can usually change the bug's status to Unknown. Watching a cache to check the health of the cache itself is generally less effective as many cachers have an aversion to logging Did Not Finds (DNFs).

I wanted to add this, too while it's on my mind: the only route description I've found so far comes from Backpacker Magazine's website. The link is here; here's the operative quote: From the mouth of Thompson Canyon, backpack 4 miles southwest, up that canyon's deteriorating dirt road (part of the CDT). Another 3 miles of off-trail travel, first ascending west, and then scrambling north on the summit ridge. As I read it that's fourteen miles, at least, which in my dotage is kind of a long day for me under ideal conditions.

I've been hiking in and around Carlsbad and Silver City, but neither of them really rank, I suspect. I'd probably want to get in one preparatory hiking trip down there before heading off into the backcountry. Picked up the Big Hatchet Peak quad and Animas BLM maps today. I've found another geocacher in the Santa Fe area who is interested in going. I'm starting to think about doing this in somewhat concrete terms.

Why was this a place you couldn't quite get to when you were a kid? Was it too far away? Was the road too rough? Or are there no non-technical routes to the top? I'm increasingly interested in this benchmark, and I think I'd be interested in a recovery trip. It'll be a few months, though; it's probably still way too hot and dry down there.

That looks neat -- only two benchmarks nearby, and the nearest geocache is forty miles away. Do you have any pictures? In the ones I've found on the web it doesn't look so fearsome.

Likewise, except for the page: