Uplink

When Pepper and I found the Thieves Isle cache earlier today, there were 4 quote: Grand Prize coupons left in the cache, with 20 quote:Everyone's a Winner coupons on top!(one person was there before us) Has anyone seen this in the other caches? You need to look closely because they look very similar.

Thanks, everyone ! Had tons o' fun caching with Pepper today. We thought we might see you up on Mt. Si EGH - I read through some of your website while I was looking up the trails in the area earlier in the weekend (good stuff, makes we want to plan some longer hikes)!

How fitting! How about this one: 1 IF I had rhymes both rough and stridulous, 2 As were appropriate to the dismal hole 3 Down upon which thrust all the other rocks, 4 I would press out the juice of my conception 5 More fully; but because I have them not, 6 Not without fear I bring myself to speak; 7 For 'tis no enterprise to take in jest, 8 To sketch the bottom of all the universe, 9 Nor for a tongue that cries Mamma and Babbo. 10 But may those Ladies help this verse of mine, 11 Who helped Amphion in enclosing Thebes, 12 That from the fact the word be not diverse. 13 O rabble ill-begotten above all, 14 Who're in the place to speak of which is hard, 15 'Twere better ye had here been sheep or goats !

OK folks, lets all take a deep breath here... The last thing we want is for the Forest Services worst fears to be realized. If someone goes charging down there and manages to hurt themselves, then a lot of us will be sorry we ever heard of Hell Hole. A cautious approach by a small group with at least a minimum amount of technical experience is what we really need for a first approach. I personally think we ought to let Navdog organize the first visit. Not only because he located it first (and shared it with us), but because he does such a good job of documenting places. Check out his Caching Life e-zine. (edited for spelling) [This message was edited by Uplink on July 01, 2003 at 06:31 AM.]

CONFIRMED! Good Job Navdog! Download a scan of the original 1937 survey map here:

Here is one possible target: It is located at N43 46.425 W122 28.322, with the river and FS road 19 at the top of the photo, and the Bar BL Ranch at the bottom.

Well, Eraseek got me thinkin again. This looks interesting: Excuse me for misspelling Basalt, its getting late... The horizontal & vertical lines are the range and township borders. Here is the description of the areas of interest: Flows, flow breccia, and pyroclastic deposits of the High Cascades Province. Flows are aphanitic to finely crystalline, commonly diktytaxitic, and aphyric to porphyritic. Textures are mostly intergranular grading to intersertal; some andesite flows are finely trachytic and a few basalt flows are subophitic. Phenocrysts, mostly unaltered, include bytownite and labradorite, olivine, calcic augite, and hypersthene. Flows and breccia form shields, lava cones, and valley fill; in places greatly dissected and modified by glacial and fluvial erosion. Includes Boring Lava of Trimble (1963) and Hampton (1972) and Battle Ax Basalts of Thayer (1936). Potassium-argon ages from this unit range from about 1.2 to 3.9 Ma; in places difficult to distinguish from youngest flows of unit Trb.

The coordinates I posted for the T21S, R3E that Maps-r-us mentioned were taken from the current 7.5 minute topo quads - most of it is on the Oakridge quad and the Westfir East quad, but there are slivers on the Westfir West quad, and the Holland Point quad. I am thinking along the same lines as Navdog however; I am currently looking at the area between Dead Mtn all the way up to Moolack - well out of T21S, R3E. I found three of the original range & township survey maps on the U of O website - two from the 1860's, and one from the 1890's. They surveyed the South and West 3/4 of T21S, R3E, and no mention of Hell Hole. None of them thought the North fork of the Middle fork was worth surveying. (Vague notions of There Be Dragons or some such). Trying to find Mike Long might be helpful. He's not likely to be successful in preventing us from finding it anyway. It's not a National Security issue fer crying out loud. I have every confidence we are going to find it if it's not a hoax. Really - in the 21st century, is it really possible to hide a half mile long natural feature from a bunch of Geocachers who are on the scent? Ha!

Gloom - your first link shows on the Oakridge quad as a dead end road, the second link shows as Shortridge Creek. I've spent a few hours pouring over the satellite images myself, and it's a tough business! I don't envy the NSA geeks who have to do it all day every day. I have a few possibilities lined up that I am still puzzling over - will post some more later.

Here is the link. You have to register to view the article. Not bad, except the author refered to a GPSr as a tiny compass!

I ran teams on espn.com for a couple of years, and won a league once. I haven't done it the last year or two because it got to be such a time-suck, but I'd be tempted by a Geocacher's league...

Hey, EraSeek, I believe thats the SMELL hole. Although if you were caught out in the wrong part o' the woods during those two weeks in July when they shot the biosolids out of the spray nozzles, I am sure it would quickly turn into Hell Hole . They should have something like the Local Notices to Mariners for hikers...

I've only logged caches in WA, OR, and HI, with CA and BC planned for the near future. However, I did run into WorldTraveler at a cache a mile from the Seattle airport, so maybe I get some vicarious extra credit for that !

I would think this Hell Hole would be visible from a satellite photo; I have been looking, but no luck yet. Boy, you sure couldn't miss Hole In The Ground...

There is a cache that uses the troll as a waypoint, and the coordinates given are N 47° 39.071 W 122° 20.831, which seemed to work pretty well as I recall!

I noticed that the webby awards site promoted meetup.com to get people together for webby event parties. Sounds like conflict of interest to me!

I think I remember hearing that in an average year about a dozen people are hit by trains in Washington State. I can understand the BNSF being really sensitive about trespassers on their right of way. They have their own staff of Railroad Police that spend a good part of their energies discouraging trespassing. I found a interesting news item on the BNSF website that shows just how touchy they are here.

Yea, I think 12,500 must be the weight in pounds.

Yea, it is cruical to find out if a potential cache site is private property or not. For King County, start looking here. For Pierce County, you can do research here.

We have a cache like that in Seattle called The Bookworm Trading Post. You definitely want to use the biggest container you can hide, cause these caches can get packed easily.

The unit Flockmaster is using is actually an optical trackball rather than a mouse - oddball unit. I almost posted the same comment until I looked it up.

From the FAQ for your mouse: Mouse Scrolling is Erratic Under Internet Explorer 5.x or Above Check for the presence of the Yahoo or Google Toolbar. If this add-on has been installed, try uninstalling it in the Add/Remove Programs Icon in the Windows Control Panel.

I have had good service from tvnav.com. I get the impression they are mom & pop outfit, but they have good prices and great service. I have also dealt with gpscity.com and that was also trouble-free. Good luck!

I haven't seen X2 yet, but I know that Garmin makes some very nice avionics equipment like this. So you can find Garmin in lots of high dollar aircraft. Magellan on the other hand, is usually velcro'd to the yoke .

Here are a couple of my favorites: GC13DA Colonel Ebey's Time Capsule GC6F03 When Midnight Falls Upon The Castle GCD69E Fundriving's Road Revenge #2 - Lake Cavanaugh GC433B Alki Tour #2 Cache If anyone wants a wallpaper sized version, just email me.