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.