Chesbro Reservoir

On Sunday, we went out to visit a cache in a very interesting location : Chesbro Reservoir, tucked in the hills west of Morgan Hill, South of Almaden.
The reservoir is almost dry and this caused an almost forgotten bridge to appear...
In 1937, 18 years before the Chesbro Dam was constructed, a small concrete bridge was built over the Llagas Creek. The dam caused the waters to submerge the bridge and gave birth to what is now known as Chesbro Reservoir.
This is a perfect time to come and discover this hidden bridge. In a few weeks, the bridge will be under troubled waters. Of course, there had to be a cache on this bridge :-)
And it is also a good time to check out tarantulas since it's the beginning of the mating season (and it's close to Halloween). We spotted two.

More pictures here

Atlas of Big Sur...

The highlight of the weekend was the hike to Atlas, another Big Sur cache by Touchstone. The meeting point was at the trail head, at 7:30 am.
Big Sur is a 2 hours drive from San Jose and to avoid waking up very early, Vero, the girls and I decided to spend the night in one of the local campgrounds. Camping along the river is very relaxing. It's a nice way of getting away for the weekend.
The hike was about 7 miles round trip, with about 3000 feet of elevation gain. Quite strenuous but not as much as the past three ones.
The weather was very cooperative. It was sunny but not too warm, partly due to the early start, partly due to a gentle breeze coming from the ocean.
Of the three Touchstone caches that I have found on the Big Sur ridges, this one was the easiest.
The trail was steep at places but the steep sections were not too long so we could easily catch our breath without having to stop too often. Also, the number of switchbacks is very reasonable (unlike the hike to Transcendental Elevation).
Near the cache, we spent some time at the "Atlas" rock. Initially, I could not figure how to see Atlas in this rock. But looking at my pictures now, I think I see an arm.
Poor Hotshoe got stung by a wasp near this rock. I have no idea who started it, her, or the wasp, but Hotshoe sure was upset. No serious reaction from Hotshoe other than a few bad words.
There was a picnic table AND a barbecue near the top (Timbertop). This is where we enjoyed a nice rest, Touchstone's cookies, and our a bug nets as the bugs were starting to bother some of us.
Note to self: Lift the net before eating or drinking.
The climb down was very quick. Even though we took our time, I think it took only 1.5 hours.
Another well spent day out :-)
Pictures are here...

Mount Tallac

This weekend, we joined a couple of friends for a camping trip in Lake Tahoe. The highlight of the stay was for me the assault on Mount Tallac. Not many caches there but climbing Mount Tallac and "grabbing" Kolly Wobbels #24 Mount Tallac (or at least its part II) seemed like a nice goal. There was also a virtual on the trail, marking the entrance of Desolation Wilderness.
The climb was pretty challenging for me but was totally worth it. The views from the summit are breathtaking. And I really like this kind of high altitude (nearly 3000 meters at the summit) hike were you start in the forest and end up in just rocks.
The hike was more than 9 miles long with about 3200 feet of elevation gain. A very healthy exercise!

From Skyline to the Sea

I embarked on a very cool adventure with a group from the GBA : an overnight hike starting at Saratoga Gap on Hwy 35 (Skyline Boulevard) and ending up at Waddell Beach, 30+ miles further down and going through Big Basin where we would spend the night.
This was my first backpacking experience and I had a blast.
It seems to be all downhill but we actually climbed more than 1700 feet total.
The first day was the mot challenging one, with most of the uphill and a very long downhill to Big Basin HQ on some exposed trails and hot sandstone formations. Only 2 caches found since I already found most of the caches along the trail months ago.
The camping part was very enjoyable. I learned a lot from the "pros" there.
The second day was a nice stroll in beautiful redwood groves, past Berry Creek Falls, and along Waddell Creek. It ended up in the marsh near the Ocean. We all grabbed the dozen or so caches along the way, including the "Big Basin to the Sea" challenge cache from 50sumtin who was hiking with us the second day (he actually initiated this section of the hike before it turned to a backpacking trip for some of us).
The weather was perfect, I was tired at the end but was feeling rather good. I'm totally ready for the next one!

1000

I found my 1000th cache this weekend.
For this milestone, I chose to hike up to Trenscendental Elevation, a cache at the top of a Big Sur peak, by Touchstone. Brutal was a word Touchstone used in the cache description, and brutal the hike was...
BuckyD, Kealia and British Invasion decided to join the fun. In short, the hike was about 11 miles long and featured an elevation gain of about 4300 feet. It took us about 9 hours. It started along the ocean on US 1, followed a very peaceful creek with lots of huge redwood, before it climbed to one of the ridge overlooking the creek. The elevation gain quickly became quite important and switchbacks appeared... An enormous numbers of switchbacks just to reach the Old Coast fire road that would lead us to Anderson Peak. Thriving poison oak and bugs made it even more challenging. It took us 4 hours to reach the road.Once there a nice easy walk led us to the cache. We left the road 2 hours after having reached it and did the whole hike down to our cars in about 3 hours. This was fast and fun for the first 2 hours but the last one was a real killer. The bodies were extremely tired, knees were no longer collaborating, minds were on autopilots and cramps appeared. After having waken up at 4:30 am, and hiked to the peak and down, the sight of our cars was really comforting.
This was a beautiful hike with gorgeous views of the ocean. A perfect memorable cache for an important milestone.

Weekend in Yosemite

I spent a wonderful weekend in Yosemite. This was obviously not a caching trip (no geocaches in National Parks) but still, the main purpose was to attend Touchstone's CITO event in Tuolumne Meadows' campground. The idea was to drive to Yosemite on Saturday, spend the night in the campground, work (CITO) on the Sunday morning, and hopefully hike on Sunday afternoon.
The weekend ended up in 4 finds, all completely meaningful to me.
I wanted to arrive in Yosemite before the end of the afternoon so that I had enough time to set up my tent. This meant that I should not stop for many caches on the way. As a matter of fact, I decided that I would stop for one cache only, in Oakdale, the only reason being it would give me a new "county" I didn't have (Stanislaus county). It would also be around lunch time so that would be a perfect break on the road.
In Oakdale, I chose to look for "Santa Claus is coming to town", which was supposed to be an easy "quick and go" that had good reviews. That was an excellent choice. Even though the cache was indeed an easy micro, I had a good laugh when I spotted it. I really enjoyed finding this one.
After this find, my only goal for the day was to get to Tuolumne Meadows, find the campground, set up my tent and wait for the "s'mores" event to start. I arrived probably around 5 pm, found a spot in one of the 5 sites that was booked for us by Touchstone. I met cachers from various areas and was equally happy to see familiar faces.
Kablooey talked me into going after a cache he had just found and that would involve a long nice hike just the way I like them. I got convinced and thought I would go for it on Sunday afternoon. I didn't have the coordinates for any nearby cache because I just thought there was none. But the boundaries of the park were not far from the campground and there are caches waiting for us just on the outside. Kablooey gave me all the information I needed, and even showed me the pictures he took. That seemed like a great plan.
After the day's long drive, the s'mores event was very relaxing. I tried my best to roast marshmallows without burning them and got a lot of advice. Marshmallow after marshmallow, and under constant supervision, I got better at it. I still can't make the chocolate melt though. It will take practice. Kablooey suggested that Graham crackers + chocolate could be replaced by "Petit ecoliers". That sounds like a good idea. I will try next time.
After a beautiful (starry) but cold (2600 meters of altitude I guess) night, it was time for the CITO event to start. We were initially supposed to assemble picnic tables and benches but the parts never made it to the campground. So instead, we were to clean fire pits (removing garbage and ashes). We were many volunteers and we swept the designated part of the campground clean in less than 2 hours. It was fun checking every campsite, greeting the campers there and asking whether we could clean their site. We sure swallowed and inhaled a lot of ashes but it was a useful thing to do. With so many sites in the campgrounds, I can't imagine how long it would take for two rangers to do the job.
By noon, the job (more that what the rangers have signed us up for) was done so after a quick lunch, I said bye to everyone around and hit the trail to find elevation 10725', this famous cache Kablooey told me about. This cache is accessed from Yosemite but is not in the park.
This was indeed a gorgeous hike, albeit challenging because of the altitude, and the steep and rough terrain. It started at the Tioga Pass entrance of the park.
A very steep first part brings you over the Gaylor lakes, along which follows a beautiful relaxing and uphill walk. The trail then takes you through many types of rocks of all forms and colors near abandoned hut and mines. The last part, past the mines is outside of the park boundaries and there is no trail. You have to completely rely on the GPS. This is probably why the terrain is rated 4.5.
I quickly found the cache about 2.5 hours after I started, signed the log, did a little trade and was ready to go. The way back to the trailhead was mostly downhill and it only took me 1.5 hour.
This was my highest cache find ever, with a max on my way to the cache at 3300 m (according to my GPS).
The weather was perfect. Sunny, but not hot and slightly breezy. I saw thousands of nice wild flowers, chipmunks, moths... This hike will stay a very memorable one.
According to my GPS, I walked 7.4 km and it took me about 4 hours. I left immediately after the hike, at about 5pm and was home just before 10pm.
I discovered later once home that the cache was so far out that it was not in the county the hike started. In other words, this cache allowed me to "score" a new county : "Mono county". Yay!
As I said, only 4 caches this weekend, but all meaningful:

• an enjoyable cache in Stanislaus County
• a s'mores event
• a CITO event
• a gorgeous hike in Yosemite (to a cache that was in Mono County as an extra bonus - see pictures)
  

I need more weekends like this one!

Back home

I'm now back home after a 4 weeks trip to France (Paris, Brittany, French Riviera, Burgundy). I put my hands on 17 caches (not bad really - this was not a caching trip and the cache density in most French area is pretty low) and hid a new one in Brittany (yes, I have a maintenance plan).
Some photos are here.

Cache-versary

I found my first cache (Sudoku Madness) exactly one year ago, on May 8th 2006. One year later, the counter displays 869 finds and 15 hides.

More than 869 caches found, here are a few things summarizing how this year of geocaching has been for me:

• It brought me back to hiking after a 3 years hiatus
• I rediscovered or discovered many great local parks
• I learned about poison oak, discovered my immunity to it (so far)
• I've been convinced for 364 days that I was immune to ticks
• I got my first tick bite (last weekend)
• I got stung by a bee
• I saw many snakes, including 2 rattlesnakes (and got rattled at by one of them)
• I encountered many black widows
  
• I drove through (almost) every single street of South San Jose
• I lifted thousands of (lamp) skirts
• I discovered incredible and secret places very close to home
  
• I got a bachelor of puzzleology
• I got my Geo Metro out of the garage
• I read both The Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Ring in English just for the multi series by mbrill
• I developed an interest in geocoins (somehow limited by the amount of money involved)
• I learned tons of English vocabulary (stump, fence pole cap, trifecta...)
• I let my cell phone fell in the Los Gatos Creek (it's still working)
• I lost my dear camera while searching for an evil cache
• I managed to wear out my GPSr battery (but I just bought a new one)
• I participated to a GBA deathmarch (and preparing a new one for this weekend - with a brand new battery)
• I hid a few caches (15 hides total including events)
• I posted more than 1100 times in the GBA (Geocachers of the Bay Area) forum
• I attended 3 CITO events (including hosting one)
• I attended 13 official regular events
• I attended many unevents at the boardwalk and one in the Peninsula
• I hosted an event
• I spent hundreds of hours playing with Google Earth
  

Most importantly, I made a lot of great friends and this is the best part to me. This has been a great Geocaching year!
Here's to the next one!

Beautiful Almaden Quicksilver

Sunday was quite hot and it was perfect for a good tough hike in Almaden Quicksilver County park. I had a list of 7 caches that I wanted to get but I think I underestimated the time and effort it would take for me in this heat to reach HotboxII at the end of Enriquita Trail from the MacAbee trailhead.
My route was the following:
Senador Mine Trail, Guadalupe Trail to the reservoir, Mine Hill trail above the reservoir, Providencia Trail, and Enriquita Trail. 8 kms and 3 hours after I started, I was at HotboxII.
Back via a longer section of Mine Hill Trail and the las short steep section of New Almaden Trail. I also hiked and back on Randol in a vain attempt to grab "Three's company".
It was hot, very hot. I even saw a young rattlesnake crossing the Guadalupe Trail in front of me.
I finished the 16km hike pretty beat, as the sun was setting. Later in the shower, I noticed that a tick was stuck on my leg. For the first time, I had been bitten by a tick.
Perfect training for next weekend's "deathmarch" in Sierra Azul, right across the stream.

Reynolds Road Shave

Saturday's main activity for me was the participation to a very successul CITO Event (my 3rd one), Reynolds Road Shave, hosted in Sierra Azul OSP by Shadow101.
The Santa Cruz mountains are beautiful. Unfortunately, some people have a tendency to consider that throwing their garbage in the ravine is the best way to dispose of it, despite the "no dumping" signs.
And this means that along the public roads in those mountains, you will find that the ravines are totally trashed. I've noticed three different types of trash.

• Free and scenic areas are always littered with bottles of beer or alcohol. People gather there to drink and they leave the place trashed.
• Ravines along free access road are trashed with garbage bags. People drive up those roads with full garbage bags in their cars and just dump there when they find a good spot for doing this.
• Then, there are the big stuff that people don't know how to dispose of or just can't afford paying for disposal services. Ovens, fridges, TV, old cars, doors, etc...
  

It's really sad to see those beautiful areas treated this way. Unfortunately, dealing with garbage is very expensive. I think we pay about $45 every other month for garbage collection, and this does not cover large items, nor extra garbage. And it keeps increasing. Unfortunately, not everybody is able to pay that kind of fees and it forces people to find alternative (and bad) solutions.

Summer's here!

Finally, Summer arrived. The weather last weekend, was perfect for geocaching. I went with the girls to San Bruno's bayshore on Saturday morning. We were to pick up Vero at SFO so it seemed a very good place to cache while waiting for a plane. Plus, the idea was to get one of the two caches (for this side of the bay) in the "Hunter's Point" quadrangle.
This was very fun. We discovered a nice and apparently new trail, all paved which was perfect for the stroller. We got great views and a few caches. Unfortunately, and I would discover that only later, once home, I did not get the correct cache for the quadrangle (I don't know how I missed it). Oh well... I will have other opportunities to go back.
On Sunday morning, we decided to go biking in the Sunnyvale Baylands. It was a nice ride and I could put my hands on a few caches. And snakes too. There was a big Gopher snake sunnying itself on the trail. After it got tired of watching us, it went back to the rocks near the water where it met an other, equally fatty, Gopher snake. That was nice. Lucie was very interested.
At the end of the ride, my bike got a flat tire and we had to walk the last 1 or 2 miles.
In the afternoon, I went caching solo in Saratoga. My main target was to find a house number that would be used to compute the coordinates for the first stage of The Fellowship of the Ring. I then found a few caches in the area, some of whiched I had DNFed last year. This was a nice revenge on those nemesis caches (Mum's the word, Black Gold, Son of Stumpy).
A cache I particularily liked was Tiny Frogs along the Los Gatos Creek. It was very nicely hidden and walking along the creek on this hot day was very pleasant. Unfortunately, while I was washing my hands in the mighty, mercury loaded creek, my cell phone fell right in the water. I managed to grab it quickly and it wouldn't work anymore for a while. But finally, on Sunday night, after it was completely dry, it decided that retirement was not for now and it started working normally again.
I think I managed to put my hand on 15 new caches over the weekend. Pretty satisfying.

800

This weekend, I hit a new milestone : 800 finds.
This was a good week :

• A FTF with Frivlas on a candcFamily puzzle cache
• The excellent "touch the twighlight", a night cache by the excellentissim GeoWomyn on Mission Peak
• A Saturday spent in Lodi (with the kids) attending the RCGDS event. We grabbed a lot of caches in the park where the event was held (Micke Grove Regional Park) and on the road back to San Jose. We saw many interesting features, including a ghost town, giant bats and a flying saucer with aliens on top of grocery store.

I think this week accounted for about 25 new finds.

Cachevenger hunt in Sonoma County

We spent last Saturday exploring Sonoma County in the context of the excellent Cachevenger hunt event organized by Moozer. We had a blast.
We spent the night before in Santa Rosa so it only took us about 15 minutes to reach the meeting point in Cotati. The weather was not so nice but we were confident that the rain would stop (and as a matter of fact, we had a sunny afternoon :-)
At 10 am, after a stop at the donuts place across the street, we were on the parking lot where a crowd was gathering around Moozer for the check-in. I received my instructions sheet and when I got back to the car, I realized how the day were going to be challenging. Lucie had thrown up all over herself... Great...We had no extra clothes so it meant that we would have to quickly go back to the hotel or find a cheap store to buy some something clean for her (and Vero) to wear.
However, we had some time constraints because being FTF on one of the 5 main caches to find would bring extra raffle tickets... Should we try? Of course we should.
Before the official start, we entered the coordinates of the 5 caches in the GPSr. I was surprised to discover how far apart they were (from Santa Rosa to Sonoma, through Cotati and Sebastopol).
We chose to rush and tried to FTF the one up north (beyond Santa Rosa, in Windsor). We figured that after the initial rush, there would be no more time constraint and we would be able to stop by a store to get some new clothes.
So off we went. I thought we were doing pretty good on the road and I was still hoping we could be FTF. But in Windsor, I made a wrong turn. I managed to go around the block but got stuck at a traffic light just before getting back to the main road. I saw other cars going by, hoping that those were not geocachers... And there passed British Invasion in his green pickup truck. My FTF hopes vanished instantly... The light turned green, and we went, following (at least) British Invasion by a minute or two. We arrived close to the cache. There were already a few people searching. Where was British Invasion? Oh well, no time for that. I had serious business to do I needed to FTF the cache. We explored various rocks, and boom, a lady in the group who arrived just before us found the cache... Oh well, STF would not too bad. She opened the cache, took the log out and what...? It was signed already... by British Invasion and the guys with him!!! Man, this guy is really good and quick! I signed the log, took the first list of items to find, and got back to the car. This was the end of the first part of the day, the FTF rush. By then, all the caches were FTFed so there was no incentive to speed up. It was time to take it easy... And find some clothes.

As we drove, we carefully observed the environment to see if anything from the list of items could be obtained quickly... A menu from Quizno's would have brought 10 easy points for example. We drove back through Windsor and this time, we took the time to appreciate this pretty little town in the middle of nowhere. One cache and a department store later, we approached the town hosting the 2nd main cache : Sebastopol. Another interesting little town that we didn't know existed. We grabbed two new caches there, including a very curious "solar powered apple", before grabbing our target cache, containing another list of items to find. The stop at the solar powered apple proved very useful as it was (as Vero noticed) right next to a Sonoma County library. And we needed a flyer from it for the first list of items. The second list of items contained items that we thought should be easy to get, such as an unopened Kid's Meal Toy (not from Mc Donald's). OK, it was near lunch time, and we had planned to stop by Mc Donald's, so we had lunch at Taco Bell instead. That was an easy 40 points :-) Several of the items in this new list could be obtained by driving to the coast but we decided not to do it. We only had a few hours left, 3 main caches to find, and plenty of items to grab. No need to drive additional miles. That would have been tough on the kids. We drove back through Sebastopol, and more particularily through Florence Avenue. Why? Because two items in the list mentioned this street: "How many turkeys can ride a horse at one time on Florence Avenue?" and "What's the license plate number on the pickup carrying a cow on Florence Avenue?". We thought we had to check this street out. And we were not disapointed. Almost every house in this street has a humorous sculpture made of various recycled material. It was like a museum. Probably the highlight of our day. We were very happy to have been driven here.

Next step was "Cotati West" for the third main cache of the hunt. Unfortunately, this cache was muggled by a neighbour who was not happy to see so many people wandering around his property.
We then set course to Sonoma, to grab the two last hunt caches before working on our lists of items. The cache by the Eucalyptus trees on the road to Sonoma was a quick stop and go, especially since the group ahead of us (and that we seem to have followed all day long) made the grab for us. We quickly browsed the new items list. Some items seemed easy to get : "name of our favorite cache", "something to add to the raffle", "business card from an auto part store", "a postcard with a cow on it" etc...
Off to the last one... In Sonoma this time. After a few wrong turns, we ended up at the gate of a cemetery and the GPSr indicated that we should enter it. Strange. We parked the car in an empty lot next to the cemetery and I walked into it (the cemetary). I didn't feel I was at the right place so I called a lifeline who I was sure got the cache earlier today and she confirmed that the cache was indeed in the cemetery. After some more searching (the coordinates didn't seem exactly right), I grabbed the cache and the last list of items. Ah... yes, "a souvenir from the mission". My lifeline told me about it and even gave me the coordinates of the mission. Since we found all the caches we could, we were going to spend the last two hours looking for extra items (we didn't have that many). We parked downtown Sonoma, close to the visitor center where Vero went to grab some of the needed items (flyers). We noticed that the mission was just 100 meters away... So we walked to the mission to get our souvenir. We chatted with the ranger, who, amazingly, spoke French, and bought the official mission patch.
There was not much time left before the begining of the event at 6 pm in Petaluma but we needed to give the kids a break so Vero took them to the playground in the center of the plaza while I went to grab one of the new caches behind the mission. 30 minutes later, we were ready to leave. Vero noticed a movie theatre on the plaza so we did a quick stop to allow her to go inside and beg for an empty cup of popcorn (hey, that's 10 points!). Luck was with us it seems as we then drove past a Kragen store. Again, Vero rushed out of the car to get a business card (50 points). It turns out that they almost gave all of their business cards today. Vero got the very last one! Another great job!
We then left Sonoma, en route for Petaluma where we spent the last 20 minutes desperately looking for a Longs Drug store (to get a postcard featuring a cow - 20 points) and an In&Out Burgers restaurant to grab a paper hat (40 points). Of course, even though we drove by many today, impossible to find what you're looking for when you're really looking for it. At 6 pm, we gave up and called it a day. We headed to the restaurant for the event.

So many people there! There was such a long line to check in all the items that we had enough time to order and eat dinner before actually checking in. Moozer, his wife and son were busy as a moozer validating all the entries from the participants and computing the number of points. I think we got about 470 points, which probably put us in the bottom 5, but it didn't really matter. We had fun.
The event was so successful that the restaurant, booked just for us, didn't have enough tables. Full full full... And yet, the sponsors were so generous that everybody got several prizes, including a goecoin, at the long expected raffle.
Lucie and Emilie (a.k.a. PrincessLulu and PrincessMimi) had a lot of fun playing with their friends LittleChecker and BigChecker (Lucie asked about them all day long).
This was an incredibly successful event and we are very happy to have participated to it. We have decided to come back to explore more of what this area has to offer.

At the Devil's

Last Saturday, I met 5 other adventurous cachers (plus an adventurous dog) on a parking lot at Las Trampas regional park in the East Bay. Objective : climb up the ridge, go over it down to Devil's hole and get the hell out of there back to the parking lot, grabbing all the caches on the way, of course.

This was a gorgeous day although a bit chilly at 8 am. WalruZ knows this area "like his pocket" (French expression meaning that he knows the park very very well). He was a great guide, knowing not only every trail, but also every stream, every cow path, and the history of every cache. Of course, he owns about half of the caches in the area, the other half being owned by Team Alamo. OK, I exagerate a bit, other people own caches too...

Climbing up the ridge went smoothly. We took several breaks, found several caches. The views of Bollinger Canyon were very nice. But nothing beats the ridge, were you could see the whole Bay, the Santa Cruz Mountains, San Bruno Mountain, Twin Peaks and downtown San Francisco, Mount Tamalpais... To the east, the massive Mount Diablo...

Guided by WalruZ, we took a cow path to See the light. We were not too sure how to approach this cache and I ended up choosing the worse path. 6 stars terrain! Bushwacking down in two canyons, having to climb up back to a small trail that my companions have found and wisely followed. We made it to the cache and had a nice break there. That was a very peaceful spot. I took the Kablooey smashed penny that was in the cache. I'm sure it's pretty rare.

From there, we backtracked and followed another cow path to Road to Perdition. What a great spot. We took another nice break in the shade. This really is my kind of place. I'm starting to enjoy the parks in the East Bay.

This was the beginning of a climb down to Devil's hole via Devil's hole trail. We grabbed the three caches down by the stream. Two of those are surrounded by Poison Oak. Eek... The other one, Return to Purgatory is owned by WalruZ himself and is really right at the hole. He told us a bit of the history behind this cache. I'm starting to be more and more knowledgeable in Geocaching lore.

Then started to most feared part of the hike. The climb up via Sycamore trail. It was supposed to be tough, we were not disappointed. We had to break regularily to catch our breath.
At some point in the climb, there was a little wooden gate right on the trail. Passing it caused a rattle snake some kind of anxiety and we heard a very loud rattling sound. Sure enough, this was rattler strategically waiting on the side of the trail. I took a few pictures, and up we went, making sure we were not disturbing Mr Rattler any further.

We kept climbing up, grabbing caches as they were popping up on our GPSrs screens. "10-9-8-7-6... Fire!" was another of my favorite spot. A nice wide open area tucked between two hight ridges...
We then climbed up our way back to the ridge and continued until we reached the Rocky Ridge Trail junction. We made a short trip to Rocky Ridge West, a beautiful spot that allowed us to do some easy rock climbing and see a pretty garter snake.

Back on the ridge, we then followed the path to the parking lot. We were exhausted after this long day and didn't feel like going for anymore cache.

14 km, 8 hours, 17 caches... This was a GREAT day.

Caching in Half Moon Bay

Last Sunday, I spent the day caching in Half Moon Bay. I have never cached there so it was a brand new territory to explore. The highlight of the day (and purpose for the trip) was the Peninsula UnEvent event, celebrating Vaccine and mjp303's 2000 finds milestone.
The event was to start at 1 pm at Cameron's and I had enough time to go after a bunch of caches before the event. Since it is always a pain to cross Hwy 1 (when there is no traffic light), I decided to start at the northest side of the Bay and then work my way South along the coast, getting closer to Cameron's.
The first cache was one of M&J's caches (Who would? Driftwood!)... Hey, a cache, and a pun (in theme mind you), it could only be a good start. Except that it almost cost me a ticket for illegal parking... The closest parking lot was full (it is apparently a popular area) so I parked along the
road. I didn't see any sign, and I parked just behind many other cars. I found the cache quickly which allowed me to be back as quickly, to jump in my car and leave before the Sheriff had started working on it (he was ticketting the last car of the line, two cars away from mine...). I grabbed a few caches here and there. Purple People have an interesting series ("this stop...") related to the old railroad system. It is quite educative. I enjoyed going after two caches in this series.
Other nice places to visit are the areas near Tsunami Rangers and Beyond the end.
The event at Cameron's was very successful. I'm pretty sure than more than 70 people showed up. What a nice place for such an event. There was a nice raffle and many people (including me) won something. I got a bag with two pins, one of which Marky was nice enough to trade for a coin (thanks to Joani). LeChuck's show during the raffle was awesome. What an entertainment that was! After the event (I was one of the last to leave), I went for more caches in the area.

A fine one was near the little downtown Half Moon Bay jail. I have been in this town several
times before. I have never noticed this jail. Very nice.
Another interesting one is Digitalfish's Ferrosaurus. It is located in a place I have driven by several times but never cared to stop "the Spanish town". They have all sorts of garden ornaments, including gigantic iron sculptures of... dinausors... Pretty cool.
Event included, I found 16 new caches during the day. And the good news is that there are plenty more left. I'll come back, with wife and kids this time.

The National Map Corps

Few weeks ago, I "enlisted" in the National Map Corps. Basically, it is a volunteer job consisting in collecting GPS data in a defined area to help producing the National Map of the USA. This is a project managed by the USGS. Closer to Waymarking than to Geocaching...
For the first time yesterday, I went out in the field and spent about 2 hours driving around in a small part of my assigned area (the Los Gatos quadrangle).
I covered only a tiny bit of my quadrangle : the area delimited by Harwood, Leigh, Little Branham (along Hwy 85) and Blossom Hill. I drove through absolutely each and every street, looking for special buildings such as schools, churches, community centers, etc... (USGS provided me with a complete list of features to look for).
It is a pretty tiring job, made of plenty of verrry slow driving and approximative u-turns.
During these two hours, I marked only 5 spots : 3 schools and 2 churches.
Although the schools were on the quadrangle map that the USGS sent me (that was last revised in 1980), the 2 churches were not so it feels like I'm going to help bring more detail to the National Map. Yay!
The collected data are supposed to be sent to USGS once the whole quandrangle is covered, in a spreadsheet format. I'm trying to really use Google Spreadsheet for the first time. I'll update the file after each data collection session.
The most current version of my data file is here. I'm making it public in the hope that people reading this blog and who know the Los Gatos quadrangle area can verify that I didn't miss anything important.
This morning, I was looking at the route I took yesterday and I noticed with horror that I totally missed a few streets. Even though I doubt that there is any feature of interest there, I will need to go back and check, just to be absolutely sure.
Looks like it's gonna take for ever, hopefully less than the one year hoped by USGS ;-)

I love pre-work caching

This morning, I had to be at the other side of San Jose for a training... But to be there at 8:30 without wasting time stuck in the traffic, you'd rather leave early. And of course, it means that you arrive early. This is the dilema that Bay Area commuters face every day.
Fortunately, there is Geocaching now, and it is a great way to spend an hour before starting your work day.
I had enough time to find 4 caches, 2 of which were particularily interesting:
GC11ARJ was a very well crafted puzzle, all in theme with the cache. It seems that the owners, the candcfamilY produce a lot of interesting puzzle caches, even though they are often out of my main area. I need to keep an eye on what they're doing. It seems to be quite entertaining.
The second interesting cache was GCVC4M. It is called SiRF-Cache and for a good reason : It is hidden on the SiRF Technology property, with the proper permission. SiRF chips are the main chips used in GPS receivers so this cache is all about GPS. It is a big cache with a gigantic camo. Finders can leave with a SiRF chip. Very cool.
After this brief caching session, plus a stop by Starbucks, I had plenty of energy for the day, which was a very interesting one.

An early Easter...

It looks like the Easter Coin Bunny spent some time in the sunny Bay Area today, dropping two eggs in the South Bay.

Around lunch time, one of my geobuddies kindly made me aware of a cache not too far from work, where the Bunny just left a little Easter present - an egg-shaped geocoin.
It took me a few minutes to re-arrange my schedule for the day and to decide to go for it. After all, wasn't the fact that I exceptionnally had my GPSr with me today, a sign?

15 minutes later, I was parking 20 meters from the cache, and all the cars going by looked suspicious to me... I quickly found the cache (I read the hint before leaving) and a nice little plastic egg was laying next to it... Woohoo!!!!

As I was signing the log, something caught my attention in the "wilderness", about 50 yards away... Could it be...? Yes, that's a bunny, lurking in the shadows, watching me enjoy my newfound coin... That could only be the Easter Coin Bunny... no doubt... He didn't know I saw him so I stealthily drew my cell phone and starting shooting...
The picture is of very bad quality but the ECB can clearly be seen.

Thanks for the coin Mr Bunny!

Eventful weekend

No caches found this weekend but two geocaching events - one attended, one hosted...

On Saturday, we celebrated Saint Patrick's day by attending the Kiss me I'm (not Jeremy) Irish! event hosted by Marky and Joani. Lucie was a little disappointed not to see her friends the Lil' Checkers (they were out of town) but made a new friend (mfc the story teller). She kept eating his chips and inquiring about his missing finger.
I came home with two new geocoins : the new "Kiss me I'm Irish coin" minted just for the event, and a "California Poppy micro", which is not new but which I've always found cool. I don't know yet whether I'm going to activate them or not.

On Sunday night, I hosted a "GoogleEarth" event at the Los Altos library. I think about 40 people showed up. A very challengig but interesting event to host. People in the audience came from different backgrounds. Some were software engineers, some were not familar with computers... This made it difficult to properly address everyone at once. I think my French accent also made things a little tougher.
But the worse part was the library network that was shut down at the library closing time. Yes, the room is available on Sunday night until 11 pm. Yes, the library has wireless internet access. But I incorrevtly inferred from this that the network was available until 11 pm. It was shut down at 6 pm. Ugh...
Fortunately, EyeOb had a web access through his cell phone and I could finish presenting the course material from his PC. This saved the day. However, we could not do the "hands on" part I really wanted to do. I'm now thinking of hosting an other event sometimes this Fall, where there will be no formal "course", only a "hands-on" workshop...

But for now, I'll focus on other and more immediate geocaching projects : setting up a hike around Devil's Hole in Las Trampas park, and continue designing my future geocoin.

Weekend in Tahoe

This weekend, we went to Lake Tahoe. Vero wanted to check out the resorts and Lucie wanted to see a real winter, complete with snow and everything that lives on it (penguins and polar bears).
We grabbed an interesting first cache in Eldorado Hills: Pony Express # 2 Duroc House. There was no traffic and we arrived in Tahoe at the beginning of Saturday afternoon. We looked for a snow park for the kids to play in the snow near Fallen Leaf Lake and it turned out that Lexxy's Kids Kache was only 400 meters from where we parked. Cool! Snow play and a cache. What I didn't realize is that 400 meters walking in more than 1 foot of snow, at an altitude of 1900 meters is pretty exhausting, especially with a kid in tow. Lucie and I finally made it and found our very first snow-burried cache. We did some trading and went back to do more snow angels.
We then crossed Hwy 91 to stroll along Taylor creek and grab the very promising multi named Stream Profile Nature Walk. Too much snow made this a difficult cache to get to, and the most interesting stages of the interpretive trail were closed. I eventually got to sign the log.
Pretty tired, we decided to pass on the two nearby caches, check-in at the motel, have a nice fondue at the Swiss Chalet, and call it a day. But not without playing a little bit the slot machines. No luck at Harrah's, I crossed the street and went to Harvey's... I played one of their 25 cents machines and got quite lucky since the machine decided to spit out 750 credits, more than $185. I cashed out and went to bed, with enough money to pay for the motel room and the dinner at the Swiss Chalet. Cool!
One of the things I wanted to do in Tahoe was to find a cache in Nevada and this is the first thing we did on Sunday morning. I wanted to avoid walking in the snow again so I opted for a drive-up virtual cache along the lake 12 km from South Lake Tahoe, Logan Shoals Vista Point. Further away than some other caches, but no effort - good. We enjoyed the view. Vero took the required pic of me at the site, and off we went...
Next step : Heavenly... We rid the Gondola. Very impressive view of the lake. There was no cache I could grab up there but we played with the kids in Adventure Peak and they had a blast. After enjoying the altitude for a while, we rid back to the lake and had a last lunch at Denny's before leaving.
Not without trying FST: Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death though. I didn't plan to spend too much time on it so I was ready to DNF this cache. Turns out that I found it very quickly, and we could leave the area and go back to our Valley.

A stop for coffee in Placerville made for a nice suprise. We didn't know this was such a pleasant town. Old style western... Very nice... Of course, there was a cache (Snowshoe) in the historic center, and of course, I went for it. I even, by chance, noticed the hangman which is apparently a landmark of Placerville.
As soon as I saw it, I remembered that someone used this Placerville "feature" as a cache hint to indicate that the cache was "hanging". Everything makes sense now.

Few hours later, we were back home, tired but happy about our weekend. Vero was happy, the kids had a blast and were tired, I grabbed 6 caches, including my first Nevada one (3 states total now), and we got a little more cash in our pockets.

Grand opening...

For a long time, I have been considering creating a blog to share whatever I feel like sharing (mostly my geocaching/hiking adventures in the Bay Area).
I resisted the idea because I didn't feel I would have enough to tell. Well, who cares? I should not feel compelled to post daily.
So there...