Tunnels, Caves, Trails and Caches

On Sunday, August 10^th, I met up with Steve (Workerofwood) and Dave (Fizzymagic) for a day of targeted geocaching. We’d identified several geocaches in the Santa Cruz area that looked to be much more fun than the average, generic geocache – to us, anyway. We’d stop for some of the normal, everyday caches when one was too close to ignore, but our focus was on these special few that had caught or attention for one reason or another.

We started off with a “Wherigo Cache”, a newer and special type of geocache that requires specific PDA or GPS hardware in order to play a kind of interactive Q&A game. The cache was located on UCSC and we were looking forward to it. Alas, a known bug had recently cropped up that prevented our Garmin Colorado from working properly, and we had to abandon the attempt about sixty seconds after we’d begun. Not an auspicious start to the day.

We located a random cache that happened to be nearby and then continued on. The next stop involved hiking a short distance along a woods trail on the western border of the campus. We stopped by the well-known cave (I climbed down the ladder to look around), then started our hike. We detoured from the typical route and followed along a nice, dry streambed, the cut uphill where we located the puzzle cache, and another on the hike back out.

We knew it was about the peak of low tide, so we decided to head straight for our next targets: several caches that required entering beach tunnels, wading through shallow water (usually below our knees), and finding geocaches on the other end. We all loved these geocaches, which provided a sense of adventure that you just don’t get with most caches. We had a blast. I almost lost my GPS at one (it fell onto the beach without me noticing, and we had to backtrack to find it), we slipped here and there, climbed some short but steep access trails, and generally had a fine time.

We got to the last tunnel cache which was noted to be much more on the crazy side than the others. Some of these tunnels aren’t appropriate or safe to be in, so you don’t want to just go zipping through any random one you find. This one required a very careful descent of a crumbling cliff “trail”, then up a fifteen-foot climb into the mouth of the tunnel. The tide was up too far by this time though, and despite a doomed and ill-advised attempt by Dave to make the climb up to the tunnel (he got whacked by a huge wave), we had to concede defeat here. Steve had wisely stayed on top of the cliff in the first place, mumbling something about risk management. Dave and I made our ascent back up the cliff (much easier than going down) safely and we started heading back towards Santa Cruz, and lunch.

On the way we made some more detours, including a stop at Wilder Ranch where we finally found a Wherigo Cache final, no thanks to the Garmin Colorado which had again failed. We also stopped at the Seymour Marine Science Center for my Earthcache, the views, and the whale skeletons. While we were there, at one point we could hear the dolphins chattering away.

We finally grabbed some pizza for lunch (with a pint of Sierra Nevada for yours truly) before heading out for the last caches of the day. We stopped for the fun Enigma puzzle final for Dave (Steve and I had done it long ago, but we recommended it to Dave), and then into the unusually-named Pinogop Park for the last stop.

We hiked the park, stopping for the plentiful and delicious blackberries along the start of the trail, before making our first find near the old clubhouse. It seems such a shame when cities or agencies have property donated and then let the buildings rot away…

We then had about 400 or 500 feet of elevation gain to knock off before reaching the Return of the Spot cache we’d come for. After a full day of physical caches and that lunchtime beer, I was beginning to feel tired on the way up. But we made good time and reached the very cool, unusual location (I won’t spoil the surprise) which I can honestly say I liked a lot better than Santa Cruz’s better-known “Mystery Spot.”

After that we trekked back to the car for the drive back to Steve’s house, where all three of us had to rush off in opposite directions to meet other obligations.

It had been a full, fun day, with around 16-20 finds for each of us over 10 hours or so. We all noted that it had felt like a day of “old school” geocaching, which I think makes us cranky old cachers. No matter, we’d cherry-picked a full day of caches that we wanted to do most, with other random ones along the way, and had a great time. It really helped to have two good friends to share it with too.

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