Conference and caching: Ventura, California

On the way to Ventura

It's been a couple months since my last post. Work has been super busy and I have been preparing for two talks I had to give in Copenhagen. Yes, there was some good geocaching there, but first was a trip to Ventura, California for the Gordon Research Conference on the Chemistry and Biology of Peptides.  Great conference, but

Artwork near the Ventura Rocks cache

after sitting around in a conference room for two days, I needed to get out. I have cached in Ventura before, in fact, some of my favorite caches are there. One area that had been on my to-do list was Grant Park. The first stop was a cache called Ventura Rocks (link), a cache by MaxGold with a 4.5 star terrain rating. Reading the description and past logs made it sound like a doable 4.5 stars, so I decided to check it out on the way to the park. GZ brought me to a nice neighborhood adjacent to a deep canyon. there was a convenient trailhead right next to parking so I followed the arrow down the steep trail to the bottom, then up a pile of rocks. With good hiking boots (I brought my trusty Ahnus!), it wasn't too bad, although maneuvering around the rock pile was tricky at times.

View from the top of Grant Park

The next stop was the top of the hill in Grant Park. I had planned to use the trailhead here as a starting point for my hike across the ridge, but the trail was closed at the gun range, so I had to backtrack. The view from up here was well worth it, even with the hazy conditions. There were a number of interesting characters in the parking lot at the top. A few urban campers were hanging around, as well as some obvious tourists in small campers. There were also a couple of cars blaring some kind of club music. I swear the bass was so loud it was interfering with my GPS! A construction worker was eating a late lunch in his truck, and a 40-something guy wearing dark shades looked like he was plotting a way to kill us all.

Yes, I'm going to hike to the top of this ridge!

Steeper than it looks...

 I was able to find an alternative trailhead the the ridge on the map and drove there. I parked in a slightly sketch neighborhood that was filled with the smells of spicy beef and marijuana. I followed the trail parallel to the ridgeline and looked for a way up. The place was peppered with signs banning any kind of activity (off-roading, hiking, dogs, etc) but also had signs marking the trail. It was a confusing maze over the flats until I finally found the trail heading up. The ascent was very steep. According to my GPSr, it was a little over 1000' of elevation change in just under 1.5 miles. Once on top of the ridge, the caches were fun to find and the views were phenomenal! The sun was on its way into the sea, and it lit up the ocean like it was filled with gold. I stopped at My Kind of Trail: Bushed Yet? by InsideVC (link) to enjoy the view. It was cache number 1600 for me and I had brought a couple of beverages along to celebrate this minor milestone. It turned out to be a truly relaxing moment, decompressing from the hike up to the cache and soaking in the gorgeous view. I grabbed about ten caches from the trailhead up to the fence that ended the ridge trail, most with (well-deserved) 3.5 terrain stars.

Late afternoon in Ventura

The Last Internationale at Hemingway's in Hollywood

After the hike, I rested for a bit, grabbed some dinner and went to the evening session of talks. I was pretty tired, but I had one more activity planned. I had managed to get on the guest list for a very small show at Hemingway's in Hollywood. The Last Internationale was tuning up for a tour with Weezer and put on a great show. After the long hike and the long drive back to Hollywood, I was pretty wiped, but it was a great day of science, geocaching, and rock-n-roll!

Munzee Olympics

      Now that the Olympic games in Sochi are underway, Munzee has come up with a new game for us to get into the Olympic spirit. The Munzee Olympics are an interesting new twist to the traditional clan wars (which are also going on... see below). The basic idea is that you pledge your allegiance to a country and then enter into up to five events. As munzees are captured, they count towards your individual event goals and rankings. Should your country rank in the top three at the end of the day, your country gets points which count towards the overall country rankings. I play Munzee for Ireland and as a country we are doing about as well as the Irish figure skating team (Ireland has a figure skating team??). In other words, we aren't going to be bringing home any gold for the Motherland!

A more detailed description of the game can be found on the Munzee blog (here), but the various events are as follows:

Freestyle: Overall points for all activity during the Munzee Olympics

Greenies: # of Greenies capped

Academic: # of Quiz and Quiz virtuals capped

Social: # of Socials capped
Badge: # of Badges earned during the Munzee Olympics (includes ALL badges)
Visitor: # of Motels capped (sum of Motels and Motel Rooms)
Virtual Olympian: # of Virtuals and Mystery Virtuals capped (sum of both)
Ice: # of Diamonds capped
Grow the Map: # of Greenies deployed (may not be converted during Olympics)
Unicorn: # of Business caps
Level Up: # of Levels gained
Triathlon: # of times you cap a complete cycle of 1 green, 1 virtual, 1 mystery

Webbed: # of Virts and Mystery Virtuals deployed (sum of both)
Perfect 100: # of days with exactly 100 points
    Go For the Gold: # of premium caps (goldies)

I signed up for the events in red. I won't be competitive in any of these (stupid day job!) but the Olympics aren't about winning the medals, it's about the spirit of competition. Right? RIGHT!

   In addition to the innovative Olympic game Munzee is running this month, a more traditional Clan War is also active. The clan I've been a member of recently has not been very active, and several players were not really contributing at all.  So, I decided to leave the Mixed DohNutz clan and go to the free agent market (aka the Munzee Clan FB group). With only about two days between Clan wars to get on a clan, it becomes a crazy place! Clans are scrambling to get the required ten members to compete, and individual players are trying to get placed on a Clan that will give them the best chance of success to win the special Clan Weapon munzees. After a few FB posts, I wound up on the short list of several clans and it was an anxious evening waiting to see how the final rosters would shake out. With only a couple hours until the deadline, I got a request from a clan in Wisconsin, so I am a member of the Wisconsin Munzee clan. We have already secured the first weapon and are closing in on the Mace Munzee. So in the spirit of the Sochi games... Go Ireland! Go Wisconsin!    

Caching in Beeler Canyon

Trail head

This weekend's caching adventure did not take me too far from home. I had a couple of hours free on Saturday morning, so I drove over to Beeler Canyon to get some caches that were further out on the trails than where we typically go with our geopets. Beeler Canyon is between Scripps Ranch and Poway, and is below the community of Stonebridge. It's a strange area, with old houses and farms next to huge mansions and a Vulcan mining operation. The main road out to the trail head services the few houses along Beeler Canyon, but also serves as an evacuation route for Stonebridge in case of fire. Anyhow, I drove all the way to the end, where there is a trail head for miles and miles of hiking/biking/caching trails. Here (link) is a convenient cache to help you find it!

Troll was still asleep here

View from 'Scatological Warfare'

The goal for Saturday was to hike a mile or so into the trail (past caches I had done on previous dog walks) and do a loop of 'Beeler' caches. The first couple were fairly standard geopiles, but then I missed my turn and had to bushwhack to a cache called "Scatological Warfare" (here's the link). This cache was placed by Narfinsan back in 2011. In those days, there weren't many caches in this neck of the woods, and then shortly after that, the whole area was closed off for two years so the Sunrise Powerlink power lines could be installed. When that "No Trespassing" sign came down, it opened the flood gates! Narfinsan had recruited a new player, 3rd&Long, and together they started dropping caches like crazy here! Many of them had "Beeler" in the cache title, and they fancied themselves The Beeler Boys. Sounded like a bunch of flim-flam to me. Too much sizzle and not enough steak, as it were. However, Scat turned out to be a nice spot for a cache and as I came back down the hill to circle back around, I happened upon a lovely string of caches. Not all by the Boys, but many were and they were really fun!

Most memorable was a new cache called 'Beeler Braggadocio' (link) hidden by Voldemark just a few weeks ago. Here is part of my log for this one:

"This one was guarded by a giant wildebeest, who snorted at my approach. He protected a very nice geopile but from my years of experience caching in the wilds of central and south america, I knew that the beast would not be so bold as to show the true location. I played along, sparring gently with him in a half-hearted effort to search his geopile. Meanwhile, I took quick glances around and was certain I had spotted the hide site. I feigned a great injury and collapsed at the site, sweeping the cache under my body."

Here's another one by FlagMan (who, shockingly, was not FTF on this one!):

"Ever since I was a young boy,
I've sought those precious logs.
From ammos down to nanos
I must have found them all.
But I ain't seen nothing like him
On any power trail...
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean cache game!"

And one by Beeler Boy narfinsan:

"Too late we realized that our decades of imbibing at Karl Strauss had given us a scent all-too-readily apparent to beer-guzzling Freems from the planet Zork, even thousands of light years distant. Voldemark was first to detect them, quickly bringing his gattling gun to bear. While he was pumping the Freems full of depleted uranium exploding rounds, 3rd wheeled around and started hosing them down with deadly dihydrous oxide from the camel pack he was wearing."

Old farmlands: RIP nano, muahahaha... 

I'm sure you get the idea. Much like the Liar's Cache near UTC, the log is almost as important as the find. In this case, the find was actually quite fun too. Without giving too much away, GZ was littered with geopiles and the first question on my mind was "How the hell do they have time to make all these geopiles?", I mean, it was "I wonder if the cache is really hidden in a geopile or if they are all fake and it is really a nano in a bush?" Followed closely thereafter by "If it IS a nano in a bush, and I find the damn thing, I'm flinging it as hard as I can throw into that abandoned field." It turned out that the hide was brilliant and no nanos were harmed during the search. This time...

Beeler Grove looking towards Mt Woodson

The final hide of the morning was 'Beeler Grove' (link) placed by 3rd&Long in February 2013. This was another one of those hides where you see something, figure it must be there, don't look well enough, then spend ten minutes walking around in circles. I'm sure you know what I mean! It was another in a string of unusual hide sites on the back side of this loop, and they were all most appreciated. Finally found the cache and was able to spend a few minutes in a lovely part of the trail. I don't know why all the vegetation and trees are located here, but it was a great place to spend a few minutes and rest. Kudos to the Beeler Boys and the others who have hidden such great caches so close to home!

Caching in Palm Springs: Wheeler Dealers and English Tom

I spent last week in Palm Springs attending a protein science conference. The meeting was very good and I had a lot of talks to hear, people to meet, and swag to grab from vendors. This left me little time for geocaching, but I managed to squeeze it in! I had scoped out the area for interesting caches, and asked some folks here in San Diego if they had some favorites. This became my to-do list. Some were on there because they were unusual hides, some were vintage, and some required some hiking. In this final post, I will share a couple of my favorites from this trip. Note: there are a couple of minor spoiler pics below.

Before I left for Palm Springs, I posted in our San Diego geocaching Facebook page to see if others had been to the area and what their favorite caches were. One thing became clear: I had to do some caches hidden by Wheeler Dealers!! Although they are not as active anymore, WD placed hundreds of interesting caches in the SoCal area . I'm also a sucker for a really creative hide, so I put some of these on my To-Do list, particularly since many of their caches are no longer maintained and are becoming archived. The first one I tried was down the street from my hotel, a cache named 'That First Step is a Doozie" (link). I arrived at GZ and saw many common spots for caches. I searched them all quite thoroughly and remained puzzled. I thought about the old Sherlock Holmes quote: "Once you eliminate the obvious spots for the geocache, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the hide site. Unless it's muggled." Well, maybe that wasn't quite what Holmes said, but still, that's where I was with this cache. Thinking WAY outside the box, I started looking in some other spots and lo-and-behold, I found something! I won't give this one away with a picture, because that a-ha moment was so, so satisfying. Definitely a fun hide!

This was an evil hide...

Incredibly well camo'd

I did some other WD hides, which were also good, but there were also some excellent WD-inspired hides. I won't list the GC numbers, since I have spoiler pics, but this will give you an idea of what you are up against with these. One was a hole in the ground, covered by a rock that looked like the hundred or so other rocks in the area. Again, I looked in all of the nearby spots that are common geocache hides, before finally thinking a little differently. You really have to be confident that the damn cache is there somewhere, because otherwise you will drive yourself crazy!

There was an urban cache in the area that was also worth noting. It had been recently replaced (I was the first finder after replacement) but the set up looked very interesting. I parked next to GZ and began my search. It was a very high muggle area, with people walking by me constantly, but still a reasonable area to be searching. There really were only a few places the cache could be and after exhausting all of them... yes, we were back at the improbable again. I then noticed something that needed to be investigated and when I had a break in the muggle traffic, I touched it. Could the hide really be that bold? Yes indeed! I've seen things similar to this type of hide in San Diego, but not this well executed. The cache looked like it belonged where it was hidden, and let me correct that... it wasn't really hidden at all. It was absolutely right in plain sight. Me and the thousands of muggles passing by looked right at it. Repeatedly. Finding a cache like that is such a rush, and the creative effort to set these hides up is really inspiring. Hopefully, I can find a couple of spots to set up something this clever, because it sure beats an Altoids tin in a lamp post skirt!

Log dating back to 2001

Dawn over Palm Springs

On my final morning in Palm Springs, I woke up before dawn to climb the Museum Trail up to one of the oldest caches in the area. The hike was short but steep, and a great way to wake up! The reward was an absolutely wonderful view of Palm Springs and the nearby wind farms. The sun rose as I was about half way up, and watching sunlight flood the area was very humbling. The target of the hike was 'English Tom over Palm Springs' placed by sdompier back in May, 2001 (link). A local cacher named Florian appears to be taking care of the cache, so a tip of the hat to that user as well for keeping this one alive for so long. GZ puts you in the rocks near the picnic tables, with booming views in three directions. It took a few minutes to zero in on exactly where in the rocks I was supposed to look, but once I found the right area, the cache was a quick find. I was stunned to see the original logbook in the cache!!! If you imagine the harsh conditions this cache endures every summer, the occasional heavy rains, the muggles who steal or CITO caches, it is truly amazing that the log has survived over 12 years. It is a geocaching relic! How many logs from the early days still exist in the wild? I don't know, but reading through that old log was a real treat.

Tom's plaque

The next stop was the companion cache to this classic, a puzzle cache named 'Holly Tom' placed by user Holly and Shelly in May, 2001 (link). This cache was placed by a user who had looked for the English Tom cache but didn't find it, and instead hid a new one. I like to try and solve the puzzles ahead of time, if possible, but this one appeared to be some kind of field puzzle. Near GZ, I found the answer to another question I had... who was Tom? Tom was a guy from England who loved the mountains in the area, so when he died in 1995, his family had a plaque placed here in his honor. It turned out that there wasn't much to this puzzle and the cache was a quick find. As I turned to leave, I'm pretty certain that I heard Tom telling me to join him for a few minutes as he doesn't have many visitors. So I did. Those 15 minutes were the most peaceful moments I had on this hectic trip. Stop and enjoy the views, people, that's why they place caches here!! Visiting with Tom was a great way to end my trip to Palm Springs!

Caching in Palm Springs: Geoart

I spent last week in Palm Springs attending a protein science conference. The meeting was very good and I had a lot of talks to hear, people to meet, and swag to grab from vendors. This left me little time for geocaching, but I managed to squeeze it in! I had scoped out the area for interesting caches, and asked some folks here in San Diego if they had some favorites. This became my to-do list. Some were on there because they were unusual hides, some were vintage, and some required some hiking. In the next few posts, I will share some of my favorites from this trip.

Beautiful moonrise

Easter Egg geoart

Last November, I did the Putting Kat on the Map series (here's the link), which was one of San Diego's first examples of geoart. I noticed that there was some nice geoart series in Palm Springs, so these became high on the to-do list. The problem with these power trails is that they can take a fair amount of time, and between meetings, breakout sessions, poster sessions, and receptions, it was hard to find a large chunk of time for power trails. I decided to try a smaller trail first, the Easter Egg Hunt series placed in March 2010 by olsenr. I skipped the second half of one of the afternoon sessions and had a couple of hours before dark. As is often the case, I stopped for a couple of other caches first (one was a Wheeler Dealer cache, more on those in a future post) so by the time I got out to Desert Hot Springs, it was getting pretty late. I had two choices: go for it and get it done before nightfall, or go back to the hotel and be a weenie. The nearly full moon was rising over the mountains, so I figured I might get a little extra light from that if I didn't quite make it. Besides, I'm no weenie. I did do some quick math and decided the best way to finish was to move quickly. Yup, I was going to run around the power trail. I was wearing hiking boots, but I had run in them before and I knew my trusty Ahnu boots were fine. So, I started at Is it Butter (link) and ran counterclockwise around the egg. Fortunately, the hides were pretty straightforward, and once I knew what to look for, many of them were instant finds. The entire loop (a dozen caches) was almost two miles and I got it done (in fading twilight) in just under 45 minutes. Great fun, and a good tune up for the next geoart series: Heartburn!

Heart-stopping views of a wind farm against the mountains

Later in the week, I had a morning free, so I decided that was when I was going to go for the heart. The Heartburn series was placed in January, 2009 by KNOCK and consists of 22 caches, each a food item that causes heartburn. I started with Pickles (link) and again worked counterclockwise around the heart. I was less pressured by time with this series, but still tried to move quickly since I was using my cell phone as a GPSr and it is notoriously bad with battery usage. Again, the hides were easy to find and almost all of them were the same type, so one just follows the arrow and signs the log. Not much thought at each cache, but that's okay. We are doing this in the name of art!! Many of the caches had clues in them (letters and numbers), which were part of a series of bonus Heartburn mystery caches. These have been archived now because some of the clues have been lost over the years and it is hard to solve the puzzle. I wrote these down anyhow, and tried to guess what the missing numbers were, based on the numbers I had, previous logs in the puzzle caches, and some logic. I got somewhat reasonable numbers for a couple of them but I wasn't confident in the numbers, or in the odds of the caches still being there. Near the bottom of the heart (Chocolate Chip Cookies and Got Milk), I ran into a huge debris field of trash. Unfortunately, trash scattered through the desert was a common theme during my caching in Palm Springs, but it was especially bad here. Glass, mattresses, TVs, car parts, construction waste, unidentified electronics, paint cans, carpeting, clothes... you name it, it was probably out here. I had to pay pretty close attention to where I was walking so as not to step on a nail or something.

Heart Shaped geoart in the desert

Anyhow, the whole group involved about a three mile hike through the desert and between the rising morning sun and the howling winds, I left the area thirsty and wind-burned. I brought a liter of water and it was gone by about cache 15. As I returned to the car, I was happy to have added a heart to my Easter egg. Two nice examples of geoart in the desert that do much more than just boost the smiley totals! A big thanks to KNOCK and olsenr for setting them up, and to the various cachers since then who have helped to maintain them.

Caching in Palm Springs: Wrecks in the Desert

Welcome to Palm Springs

I spent last week in Palm Springs attending a protein science conference. The meeting was very good and I had a lot of talks to hear, people to meet, and swag to grab from vendors. This left me little time for geocaching, but I managed to squeeze it in! I had scoped out the area for interesting caches, and asked some folks here in San Diego if they had some favorites. This became my to-do list. Some were on there because they were unusual hides, some were vintage, and some required some hiking. In the next few posts, I will share some of my favorites from this trip.

Sand dunes near Sweetboy's Sandbox cache

There was an Earthcache near the junction of Highway 111 and I-10 that I wanted to get, so I set out during an extended lunch break to grab that cache.  As I was looking at other nearby caches, I noticed that several of them had not been found in a couple of years. In fact, they only had a couple of finds since they were first hidden in 2009. One of them (Shades 2: Sweetboy's Sandbox by SHot70 link), looked like it was in an interesting location and doable as part of my trek to the EC. I have a real soft spot for lonely caches, so this became my first stop on the way to the EC. I drove out of Palm Springs and turned off of Highway 111 onto Tipton Road, parking near the train tracks. Behind me were steep mountains and in front of me was a large wind farm. Other than that, there was a whole lotta nothing out here. I hiked parallel to the train tracks and then crossed underneath the 111 in a dry creek bed. After that was about half a mile of sand. Up the dunes, down the dunes, around the dunes but finally I came to an old lake bed (well, more of a pond really) and saw my likely target for GZ. The question was, which one? Just across the dry pond were the skeletal remains of several vehicles. In the lake bed itself were scattered car parts, beer bottles, and deteriorating tires. It looked like this had really been a great party area at one time!

The cache is in there... somewhere

GZ led me to the remains of an old van (Chevy, maybe?) and I began my search. I've done car hides before, so I looked in the usual spots but was coming up empty. I resorted to the hint (don't judge me, people!) but misinterpreted the clue and focused on one part of the car for about 15 min. I was talking to myself out there (the desert does things to you, you know), trying to work through another way to think about the hint. Fortunately, myself had another idea and I returned to a spot I had already searched, but searched it much more aggressively. Bingo! A very well-hidden mint tin, attached with a magnet. The tin was filled with sand, but I was thrilled to be the 4th to find, particularly since the last person to sign the log found it on January 29, 2012, almost exactly two years ago! This was a little surprising since it wasn't too hard to get out to this cool area, and the search itself was also pretty fun. An interesting hike, a tough search, a perfect hint, and a fun find. This was definitely one of my favorites on this trip!

Adopting orphan geocaches

I did my good caching deed yesterday. I adopted three geocaches that needed good homes. Team Adelos, a long time Southern California geocacher, decided to put his caches up for adoption. Many of them were far from my house, but a few were close enough that I decided to take them. I don't adopt just any cache... I mean, why adopt a LPC in a mall parking lot? But one of them was on Black Mountain (Heart Pumper link) and two were on Iron Mountain (puzzle caches GCWGE0 and GCWGE1), so they were nearby and in interesting areas.

Cachers like Team Adelos make it really easy to adopt, because they find new owners before their caches are in dire straights. There are definitely two schools of thought about adoption, however. I have met cachers who believe that when a cache needs maintenance and the owner is AWOL, the cache should be archived to open up the spot for new caches. For many caches, I agree with this. I have certainly requested a few DNF-riddled caches be put down simply because I was tired of seeing the cache pop up on my map. I suppose I could have replaced the cache, but that has its own set of challenges. Sometimes, cache owners get pretty upset when their cache is replaced without permission, and on the rare occasion that I do this for a neglected cache, I usually have tried to contact the owner about adoption anyhow. Another problem with replacing the cache is that if you change containers (say, from an ammo can to a pill bottle) or hide type (hanging vs. geopile), you can't make the necessary changes on the cache page.

That said, the one type of cache I really have a soft spot for is an oldie. There is something unique and special about a cache with a really low GC number, and I will go out of my way to adopt these whenever possible. Again, some will say that if the cache has been replaced over the years, or the hide site has changed, then you really aren't finding that classic cache. This may be true, but I still like finding them, so I presume others do too. When I am traveling to a new area, the first thing I look for are caches with low GC numbers or high favorite point totals. Not just for Challenge grids, but because cachers have been coming to that spot for over a decade to sign a scrap of paper. To me, that is cool.

Besides, low GC number caches are a dying breed and it is really exciting for me to get them. About a year and a half ago, I adopted GC140 (San Diego Ocean View/Double Peak Summit, link). It was the second cache hidden in San Diego county (in January, 2001). Back in the day, it was a significant hike to get to GZ, but now you can drive right up to the peak! Even though it is much easier to get to and the cache container has been replaced many times over the years, it doesn't take anything away from the fantastic view from here! Plus, it is GC140! It's still a little piece of GC history. So, I'm happy with my new 2006-era caches. One day, they will be antiques as well... just like GC140.