Angry Marmot

As this is a popular cache machine (10-16 depending on route) I thought I would post an update regarding the current winter conditions. We hiked from Rattlesnake Lake to the west parking lot in about 5 hours today at a brisk pace and with few stops. The area between the Rattlesnake Ledge and the tower is all heavy snow and without snowshoes we were usually up to our knees or more. The gentle stretch west of the tower is easy hiking with only a few inches of firm snow. If I were to do this again in these conditions I would definately take gators and snow shoes. We did get cell service almost the whole way, which is really nice. So the up side is this hike is still very doable despite the snow and shorter days. The down side is that I think caching along the way would be very difficult. We decided early on to scrap caching and just do the hike as stopping to dig thru 3-4 feet of snow would have certainly kept us from making the full westward route. Keeping moving made being wet OK, but I wouldn't go for these caches unless you have good gear, patience, and manage your time really well (you'll probably want a shovel). Also, this time of year you are less likely to get the great views from the ledges and peaks. Anyway, just a heads up in case anyone else was considering this hike soon. I think it's still a great winter hike, but again we are going to hold off on a cache run until the spring thaw. The whole hike is about 11 miles with a net elevations gain of about 2700. Peace. -JB

I have a saved track from a recent hike that I would like to pull statistics from to send to the other folks who accompanied me. In mapsource I see how under track properties you can get the time and milage, but I do not see any option to pull out statics such as net and gross elevation gain, and other more complex statistics. I did see where you can pull up an elevation graph per milage, but there was no way to save that image that I could find aside from a prnt scrn. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing an easy way to pull these additional statistics if they exist. Any suggestions appreciated. Im using mapsource 3D topo and a garmin 60csx with a PC. Thanks! -JB

Im in the market for a new phone and thought I'd get a smart phone to replace my old palm and reduce the number of gadgets im hauling around to just my garmin and the smartphone. I've been checking out the motorola Q and palm treo. If anyone is using either of these for paperless caching Id love to hear any plusses or minuses. Also I was wondering if there was anyway to connect your GPS to a PDA or smartphone via say the USB. You know so that you could have your gps in you your pocket/bag and just read the info off the PDA. Just seems that it would free up a hand and you'd have both your GPS info and cachmate type program on one device. Im using a garmin 60csx if that helps. Any info/suggestions appreciated. -JB

My lady offered to get me a new GPS for the holidays and I was thinking I'd go with the garmin 60csx. I was wondering if anyone knows of any good deals out there so that I can point her in the right direction. Any suggestions appreciated and also any suggestions for accessories please. -JB

So we made it to LV and did a short bit of caching yesterday in our free time. We hit first creek out in red rocks and then hunted a micro near my buddy's place. Here's the crazy thing, we went 0/4 for finds. One was a 5/5 that hasn't been found since '03 so I wasn't shocked to miss that one (despite givin it a heck of a go), but the other three all had previous logs stating that they thought the caches were missing. i usually don't read the logs until after or unless i get stimied, but now I'm thinking that I really should be reading em before we head out. Anyway, I sorta suspect that someone in the LV area is out jacking caches. I know this has been a problem elsewhere from time to time and maybe it's hit Sin City. Again we only hit one part of redrocks and one micro so maybe it was just bad luck, but I can't remember ever missing a find much less four in one afternoon. Oh well, we'll try for a couple more today. The real downside is that my buddy had his lady along for the first time and I think she thought it was sort of pointless since we didn't find anything. I think tonight we'll do DUC since it was done successfully last weekend. Peace.

Try www.NevadaGeocaching.com Im travelling to LV in couple weeks and was directed to that site.

Awesome, thanks for the info. From some reviews it sounds like it is more of PDA with a built in GPS, rather than a GPS with extended Geocaching capabilities. I think I would be hesitant to hike in ill weather with it. With Geocaching being a fairly large part of the GPS market I'm suprised that they aren't expanding the software on the next gen of units. It seems like it wouldnt be a huge leap to add Cachemate type functionality to a GPS. One unit where you could upload your .gpx files one time and you'd be ready to go with all the info that you might need.

I was just wondering if there are any GPS units out now or on the horizon that would make it so that you don't also need a PDA to do paperless caching. Mind you I'm not looking for complete PDA funtionality (although that would be neat), I would just love to have my GPS hold/organize more geocache data like my palm does with cachemate. Does anyone know if garmin or magellan have something like this on the drawing board? Thanks. -JB

A couple buddies and I are hitting Las Vegas for a few days and I was hoping to get some suggestions for multi-cache hikes in the area. We're looking for routes that can be done in a day or less and are within an hour or 2 of the city. The more caches along the hike the better, but if there are any sights or particularly good single caches that we shouldnt miss Id like to hear about those too. I think we're going to do some climbing at red-rocks so anything near there would be a bonus. Any info/suggestions appreciated. Thanks! -JB

Monte Cristo is the longer hike (8 miles roundtrip plus exploring), and to me, anyway, the much more interesting hike (albeit it's been years since I did the full hike although hope to rememdy that soon). Here's a good website on the history of the area: http://www.whidbey.com/mcpa/ Big Four Ice Caves is about two-miles roundtrip on a very good and very popular trail with boardwalk to start with and then a nice bridge across the river. I saw my only cougar in the wild there--it crossed the trail only about 25 feet in front of us. Certainly got our attention but never even looked our way. The cache there was a winter placement, which makes it a very difficult bushwack in the summer so I've never bothered to try for it. You will want to read the recent logs before deciding on that, and note that the geocoin is not in the cache. The 8/16 NFS online report says "Trail is snow free and caves are forming. Far right cave is best, really large. Stay back from snow field. Bridge construction at Ice Caves trail end. STAY OUT AND AWAY FROM CAVES! Avalanche dangers." They always warn about the going into the caves or climbing up the snowfield, but people ignore the warning and every year or two someone is badly hurt or killed there when a cave either collapses over them or under them. Personally, I'd start with Monte Cristo so you have as much time there as you want to explore, and then do the Ice Caves if there is still time. Neither hike will have that much verticle. After that, there are a number of driveyby geocaches you could grab on the way back, e.g. the Sprerry-Iverson Mine, Youth on Age, etc. Great advice, I think we'll go with it. Thanks much!

Great suggestions, thanks. Do you folks think its possible to do both the ice caves and monte cristo in one day? It looks like those are both along that hwy loop. If so how would you suggest doing it? If not which is the better hike? Thanks much gang!

The boys are headin back into town next weekend for our annual get together and cache hike. Thanks to great suggestions from y'all we had a blast doing the APE hike and then Rattlesnake Ridge the last two times they hit town. So here I am back again bugging y'all for some hike suggestions/info. Ideally we'd like something 0-2 hours drive from Seattle, multiple caches along the hike and/or near the trailhead, something 0-15 miles in length or that can be done in a day, and of course beautiful sites/interesting landscape is a bonus. This is really the only time my buddies cache so I want to get the most bang for our buck. One possibility is to do the snoqualmie tunnel (APE) hike again but drop a car this time so that we can go further and pick up more caches. Last time we did a round trip hike from west of the tunnel (avalanche shed) up to the lake and back. I'm not sure the caches beyond these points in either direction are worth a return visit so maybe someone could advise us on that. As always any information/suggestions appreciated. Thanks gang! -JB

Thank to suggestions here my buddies and I enjoyed a great hike of the Rattlesnake Ridge caches last time they were in town. They are headed back this way in August and I would like to plan out another great day hike for us, ideally one that also picks us up a fair number of caches. I would appreciate any suggestions or information, thanks gang! -JB

How do you add a pic to just your profile...I'm probably just missing it, but I don't see an upload option in my member section tabs. Thanks.

Awesome, thanks and happy holidays!

Do either of the two parking areas (lake and west trailhead) require parking passes?

Great suggestions. Anyone know where I can download or otherwise find a map of this trail/route?

Hey folks. Some buddies are flying into town and thanks to some suggestions from y'all we are going to do the Rattlesnake Lake hike that picks up the following caches: Goodfellow Easter cache H2O Tower #3 stumped at the Winery Snoqualmie Point the sound os music the BIG Kahauna #2 Velcro Rattlesnake rest stop owen creek cache RMT prospect peak rattlesnake mountain - east peak rattlesnake mountain - log jam landing rattlesnake ridge snakes that rattle 2 snake bite rattlesnake cache cedar falls We are hitting it next week and I thought I would pop in and see if anyone who has done this trek before had any suggestions, ie: parking, permits, route, terrain, etc. Any 2 cents appreciate. Thanks and happy holidays! -JB

I also had success doing the export to a explorist or .gs file in GSAK and then just browsing to that file in the magellan geocaching software. That worked like a charm, although the drag and drop method sounds even easier.

I am new to geocaching and recently a buddy flew down from Alaska and we did a great 13+ hike hitting nine caches, including the Mission #9 APE cache. This hike was simply outstanding and allowed us to hit some interesting points of interest while also having fun scouting out the caches. The success of this outing was due to great suggestions from all of you on this board and I was hoping to get yet more advice on future trips. What I am looking for is ideas for other similar hiking routes that would allow us to hit multiple caches while also hiking to some neat destinations. Because my buddies live out of state I want to make the most of the couple days that they have here and hit the spot(s) that pack the best ratio of cool caches and neat locations. So if you were in my shoes, which multi cache hiking routes would you take them on when they hit town next? Again thanks for the previous suggesitons and any information and input is greatly appreciated. Peace. -JB

Just picked up the Explorist 210 as my first GPS after doing a lot of shopping around and research. Seemed to be the best option for my price range ($150-$200.) Very happy with it so far. If I had more to spend I would grab the 400 for the versatility of the memory card, but for me that was more of a luxury feature so I stayed within my budget.

Thanks for all of the great suggestions and information. Our bike ferry didn't pan out so it looks like we're gonna hike the suggested tunnel loop or just back track at some point. Thanks again!

Hey gang. A buddy is flying into town and we were thinking of doing APE tomorow to get a little hiking or biking in while he's here. We haven't been up to this area caching before and haven't hiked up there in about 10 years. I was wondering if anyone could suggest where to park and/or some good general routes to take. We're not looking for any spoilers on the actual caches just some tips on general routes that will allow us to hit some other caches along the way. Again we're not sure whether we are going to bike or hike, so any suggestions there would be appreciated to. We'll be heading there from northbend so if anyone has suggestions of other ones to hit that would be great too as we have the whole day to hunt stuff down. Thanks for the advice and have a good one! -TAM

I know many of you have been waiting for the new Magellan Explorist 210 so I wanted to let you know that at least one online retailer has it in stock. I just ordered mine from The GPS Store and I verified over the phone that it's shipping today. Their price is $165 and they offer 2nd day air for about $13. I've checked around and this is the only place so far that seems to have the 210 in stock. I hit my local REI for their fall sale and the guy there said that it's listed on inventory, but that no stores actually have it yet. If anyone finds it instock elsewhere please share the info. It would be nice for others to have more choices and maybe even get a better deal on the price and/or shipping.

Not sure, but I don't think so. Being that they are charging a fee I figured they must be bringing some folks in to teach the class. I don't know too much about it, but saw the announcement and thought I'd pass it on figuring those new to the game might want to check it out.