jonboy

There was a lot of caching done this New Year's day, but one that impressed me was Lostwoodsrambler, who bagged Break Dem Bones at 1:25 AM yesterday, then went on to snag "Blunderberg", "Me and Mrs Jones", "Dunderberg Railroad Cache" and " Down by the River on the same post midnight loop. I'm sure there were cachers that bagged 2005 caches earlier, but this has to be one of the hard core early bird cachers.

This is a truly tragic story, our prayers go out for her safe return. It sounds as if there has been a full mobilization of SAR resources, so I doubt if more volunteer searchers would be needed. More untrained people flooding into the area would make it harder for Search Dogs and Trackers to pick up her trail. What a SAR investigative team always will want is solid, first hand information about the subject,their equipment, their habits, their state of mind, personal relationships ect.. In all likelyhood this investigation will be carried out by the PA State Police, so if a contact number could be posted for anyone able to offer such information, this would speed the effort, by insuring that the actionable intelligence reaches investigators promptly. This is how her friends can best help the effort to find her. God be with her.

I don't know if you are comfortable doing long winter hikes, but if you are, the classic ascent from Rt 9D to Mt Beacon along Breakneck Ridge would allow you to find as many as twelve caches. This is a serious climb in winter, although much of the ice will have melted in this recent thaw, north facing slopes will still have some ice and some kind of traction device (such as Yaktracks or instep crampons) would be needed. A group of us did a slightly less strenuous loop from Stony Point up Mount Taurus, over the top and down the valley to the north (the Brook Trail), picking up eight to twelve caches along the way last spring. I wouldn't advise doing either of these hikes alone, or if you have no winter hiking experience, but they are two of the most spectacular hikes in the region. There are guite a few caches along the valley that offer excellent views without that kind of long hike. Some of them are: "JR's Point", "Putnams Redoubt", "Riverdance" and "Is The Madam at Home".

That sounds like a quick fix "solution", calculated more to kill this story, counting on the short attention span of the public and the press to allow this story to pass. I also have seen the same hazardous waste site declared clean many times. Nuclear Lake, the site of a former Plutonium processing plant was purchased by the Reagan Administration NPS as part of the Appalachian traill corridor in Dutchess County for $800,000. Subsequently, taxpayers paid almost $4,000,000 in repeated clean ups, each time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would pronounce the site "clean" and outside groups would come in and identify more nuclear hotspots. Cleaning up the residual waste on the surface is the easy part, what about the waste underground and in the water table? Just because it hasn't leached out as far as the reservoir yet, doesn't mean it can't or won't. And if it gets to that point, the opportunity for remediation will have passed.

There can be little doubt that Ford planned all along to use the mine shafts as a repository for their paint sludge and other industrial waste, why else would they bring it to the site? The residual amounts that were left on the surface are nothing compared to the amounts of waste that remain in the shafts. There was never much public awareness of this action, just horrified whispering amongst NJ State employees, they knew that to speak out publicly about this issue would cost them their jobs. I understand that the State of New Jersey was desperate to keep the Mahwah plant operating, and was willing to turn a blind eye to this kind of operation if it would keep the Ford plant open. We can quibble about whether this waste should be called Toxic waste, low level toxic waste, trace amounts of carcinogenic compounds or just sludge, but no one thinks it should be upstream of one of the major reservoirs in New Jersey. I think that absent the reporting by local investigative journalists, there would be little public awareness, and hence, no pressure to take action, and they are doing a great public service. Of course, some of their facts may be incorrect, but the gist of the story cannot be denied. Naturally it irks government officials to come under the spotlight of public scrutiny, but this is how democracy is supposed to work. In my experience, most of the career environmental professionals are very conscientious and try to act in the public interest, but those at the top levels are political appointees who are operating on quite different agendas. I am not naive enough to believe that science and public health will always take pecedence over political and fiscal considerations. As far as the Ramapo Indians, I think this is the old story of dumping waste in areas where the populace is too poor, uninformed and disorganised to offer any effective resistance. To start talking about their efforts to get a casino is just tossing out a red herring to deflect attention from the real issue.

This thing is a real "Love Canal" situation. Their idea of cleanup in the early days was to bulldoze the toxic waste into the mine shafts. Reportedly, in bulldozing the waste into the shafts, a bulldozer fell in and they left that too. Of course, these shafts are flooded, filled with a toxic brew and leaching out into the water table. A superficial surface cleanup is really going to do nothing. This is a Pandoras Box that they will never be able to close once it opens. I'm not surprised the local residents have health problems, I just wonder what impact it has on the reservoir.

Pay to play is the rule everywhere, you can expect this kind of pork to get larded out to major campaign contributing contractors. I wouldn't expect any backcountry trail projects, rather roadside facilities that make for good photo-ops. Million dollar Interpretive centers, 1/4 million dollar toilets and parking lots, half million dollar pedestrian bridges ect. None of these will be funded for maintenance, so you can expect them to degrade rapidly. The Anthony Wayne Recreation Area is one of the most glaring examples of this kind of waste.

If you have the required GIS knowhow, you can go to the USGS website and download free DRG files of 7.5 minute quads you want. You will have to determine the specific USGS quads you want, and when you finally have them, you will still not have accurate AT Data, as the position of the AT shown on these maps will be decades old. I could not begin to do all this, and by the time I got done, I would have spent far more in time and consequently cost myself more than if I simply laid out the $50 for the entire AT. Either way you are going to have to pay, either in sweat equity or in cash.

MapTech has worked with the ATC to produce a digitalized map set of the whole AT: http://www.maptech.com/land/appalachiantrail/index.cfm This is going to cost you a few bucks, you are not going to get reliable data free. There are also some trail data files posted on the TOPO! website: http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/search.cfm There were some files produced for parts of the AT posted here, but I found them to be quite inaccurate in areas of which I had first hand knowledge. In anycase, you would have to buy TOPO! to use them. The trouble with OziExplorer is that it does not produce seamless maps, and Murphy's law dictates that the trail you are on will wander over the seam of enough different maps to make you crazy. Also, Oziexplorer will not import TOPO! or Terrain Navigator files. You could print them out and scan them, but we are talking about 2,000 miles of trail here, more than three hundred maps, it would be cheaper to buy the Maptech product.

We have been "using the environment" for more than a century, that is what changed large parts of the Garden State into the Garbage Dump State. States that have experienced more than a century of unfettered despoilation of God's bounty realize that they have been defecating in their own beds. You don't have to be a tree hugger to want clean air and drinkable water or wish that your rivers did not flood every year because all natural barriers to flooding have been stripped away. I'll admit that the topsoil stripped away by ATVs does not compare to the damage that has been done by bulldozers, but at least the bulldozers don't drive around doing donuts and tearing the ground up just for fun. But who knows, maybe a group of hard core off road enthusiasts will take up off road bulldozing because it is more macho than those whimpy little ATVs. And of course, they will be entitled to their share of the spoils. We can't let these selfish environmentalists stand in the way of progress.

As regards the inclusion of funding for off road motorized vehicle trails, I would view this as more of a trojan horse than a compromise. It doesn't matter how small the amount, what matters is that the principle has been established that off road vehicle users are entitled to have state funds used to construct ORV Trails, presumably on state land. This is an attempt to end run the environmental assessment of the impact of such trails, by providing funds to a revenue strapped agency, knowing the very existence of such funds will impell the agency to use them. This is a faustian bargain that the environmentally concerned citizens of New Jersey will come to regret. I guarantee you this misguided funding will be increased. You cannot be just a little pregnant, nor does it matter what a nice fur coat you have been given.

Here is a link on the DEC website for Regional Enforcement Coordinators: http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/ogc/rec/rec_staff.html I don't know if this is the same as the enforcement officer, but at the very least, they could steer you to the right person. By the way, you won't have any luck trying to call the general number for Region 3 in New Paltz, all you get is a recording telling you to enter your parties extension.

I would like some further clarification of this new ruling. Will this lifting of the ban be mandated for all nine DEC regions, or will it be subject to the veto of individual regional administrators? Has this policy been promulgated in writing? Will it be seen as complying with current and proposed Unit Management Plans, or will they need to be rewritten? The DEC has many different categories of land which it manages: Forest Preserve- Divided into Wilderness Areas and Wild Forest State Forest Reforestation Areas Wildlife Management Areas Multiple Use Areas Unique Areas State Nature and Historic Preserve Conservation Easements It is hard to imagine that this new policy will include all of these categories. Conservation easements, for example, are parcels of private property overseen by the DEC. It does seem that some kind of favorable interpretation as regards placing of geocaches has been adopted by the DEC, but I hardly think an oral communication will suffice. While I know there will be some within the DEC that would welcome the lifting of this ban, I know that others will be quite unhappy about this turn of events. I was involved in getting the DEC to reverse itself as regards to allowing canisters on the Catskills trailless summits over 3500 feet for the Catskill 3500 Club, and the clause allowing this had to be written into the relevant Unit Management Plans. In addition to this the club had to sign a memo of understanding as regards the conditions required for maintenance of the canisters. In order to get around the prohibition of leaving private property on state land, the canisters had to become state property and we agreed to become the caretakers of the canisters, under DEC supervision. Since that time, we have had no trouble from the DEC as regards the canisters, but I would imagine it would be a different story if we attemted to put Canisters onto new peaks. This seems like a very positive turn of events, but I wouldn't rush off into the mountains with ammo boxes just yet. Reading the series of bureaucratic obstacles geocachers had to overcome to place geocaches on PA State land, I would expect some kind of stringent vetting process for placements on DEC land. It would be helpful to have those required steps stipulated in advance.

I think you could create a database for New Jersey in GSAK by opening multiple PQs into one database, but it would have to be subdivided by filters to get a list of caches less than 500 that could be loaded into the GPSr. I never load 500 caches into my GPSr, I like to leave room for waypoints I might create in the field, such as points along a multiple, my car or strategic trail junctions. I have created GSAK data bases for each state using only one PQ, with the center point of each PQ being in the middle of the mountainous area where I prefer to cache. I also have a PQ based on my home zip code for those days when I might end up in any state of the tristate region.

You may already have done this, but I would advise buying all the maps published for our area by NYNJ Trail Conference (www.nynjtc.org).You might also check out the Rod Johnson Maps of Northern New Jersey (http://www.map-maker.net/). The New Jersey Walk Book and the New York Walk Book provide overviews of what is out there, but not enough detailed information to hike with these alone. My favorite guide books are Harriman Trails by William Miles and the ADK Guide to the Catskill Trails. You might also want The Appalachian Trail Guide for New York/New Jersey and the Long Path Guide. These cover areas on these long distance trails not dealt with by any of the other guides. There also many online sources of info, here are a few of my favorite links: http://www.njpalisades.org http://www.co.bergen.nj.us/Parks/Parks/Maps.html http://www.parks.morris.nj.us/parkslist.html http://www.localhikes.com http://www.slackpacker.com http://www.thebackpacker.com

I have most of the NYNJ Trail conference mapped areas on TOPO files. I posted some of them on MapXchange a few years ago, but I have done a lot of field checking and updating since then. Anyone who uses TOPO! and would like to see the files, e-mail me and I will send them to you as an attachment. I have most of Northern New Jersey on one file, so broad band would be good to read them. Let me know which areas you want. I also have even more trails on Terrain Navigator (Maptech), we use those for SAR. I prefer TOPO! for trail mapping.

Some of my best caches are seldom visited, because getting to them involves hard work. But all of us with more than a few placements probably have caches that are not really quality caches. It could be too hard for us to restock, too many finds by muggles, poor GPS reception, whatever. The point is that the caches you have out reflect on you, if they cause problems, or have been allowed to degrade, consider removing them. The sky will not fall if you weed out some of your lesser caches.

I think that part of the problem with cache saturation is that very few people ever voluntarily archive a cache. If we want to have the pleasure of putting out new caches, then we are going to have to consider archiving those caches that have outlived their usefulness or been abandoned by the person who placed them. I myself have only archived one cache voluntarily, but after a couple of years, I am looking at some of my inactive caches and wondering. Bassoon Pilot advocated a rather extreme version of this, and practiced it himself, archiving all of his caches. Another issue complicating matters is that placement guidelines have been tightened up, so that caches on the AT are now usually turned down. This offers a compelling reason for people to take advantage of the fact that older non-conforming caches are grand fathered in, particularily in areas where there is few large tracts of land other than the AT. The cache I voluntarily archived (Jumping Jack Flash) was on the AT(therefore non-complying with current guidelines), had never been visited by me for maintenance in it's two years of existence and received very few logged visits. I am thinking about archiving a couple more of my caches for similar reasons. I am not saying merely click "Archive" on the cache sheet, but go out there and remove them. If a cache owner has abandoned a cache, it is litter and should be removed, not adopted. This gives new cachers a chance to place caches as well.

Ithink when you talk about saturation, you have to think of cache density , or caches per acre. Central Park 843 acres - 14 caches = 60.2 acres per cache Cheesequake State Park - 1,284 acres - 14 caches = 91.7 acres per cache Harriman State Park - 52,000 acres - about 110 caches = 472 acres per cache I can think of more than one postage stamp size park that doesn't have any where near this ratio of acres per cache.

Walkin Ed didn't have to zigzag back and forth, he already had many of the caches. I would say he walked 15-16 miles with about 3000 feet of change in elevation. He also probably dropped down one of the valleys after Sunset Point on his way back, probably he picked up the yellow Wilkinson trail, bypassing Sugarloaf (That one needs a cache too!) and coming out in the big parking lot up the road.

Well, just as I was getting cold feet about setting this up for this fall, Walkin Ed walks the whole ridge, all the way to Grazing in the Grass and back. Congratulations Ed for showing the way! That's almost double the distance I was proposing as a"Death March", so I have to say he met the challenge and then some. Who's next?

Here are some online information links: Gorp Views from the Top Trailspace AMC Discussion Board Slackpacker Sometimes, the best wat to get relevant info is to ask on one of the discussion forums. My favorite is "Views From The Top", but it is primarily oriented to the Northeast.

All the caches I placed out are approved and posted. I think it is too late in the year for an organized group hike, it gets dark about 5:15. It is by no means impossible to do this whole group of caches in a single hike this late in the year, it is just the margin of error would be cut very slim. Haggeus did something very similar last year, when there weren't all these caches out there. Spotting two cars is the way to make it feasible. There are four different traiheads where cars could be left at the north end, the lot at the bottom of North Beacon Mt on Rt 9D, street parking on Mountain Ave to come out via the Fishkill Ridge trail, trailhead parking on Sunnyside Rd in Glenham for the Overlook trail and street parking at the east end of the Wilkinson trail on North Old Albany Post Road. In the event that darkness does catch a cacher up there, the best course would be to follow the dirt road down from the microwave towers on North Mt Beacon to Mountain Ave, next to the Fishkill Ridge trail. This would also be the easiest route down for anyone whose knees were feeling a little the worse for wear.

There is nearby camping in Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park, about eight miles away, on Rt 301.

We are talking about someone who couldn't stand up, and had a broken Pelvis, not a headache. I have also had to sit and wait for someone to get it together after a nasty bang. That is my point, you don't leave until you are sure they really can walk, and you don't trust what they say, but instead observe what they can actually do. And when you start out again, you go behind them and watch for a while to make sure they are okay. I have had friends intervene, make me stop and take care of myself. I cursed them out, but they insisted, and of course I later realized they were right. That is the kind of courage I respect.