28 Miles Without A Car

I think for once, I am happy that the weekend is over. I can actually rest for a few days and recover from the weekend. We had a great weekend, but I did a lot of work and I am feeling it this morning. Here's the story:

Saturday morning was our CITO event. That is Cache In/ Trash Out. Geocachers get together and pick up trash somewhere, we happen to be in the Lolo National Forest this year. We picked up a makeshift shooting range and an area which has been a popular high school party location. You can imagine the trash, but if you can't then take a look at the picture! That's my truck and the Forest Service truck, both full! It took about three hours for the group (about a dozen of us) to pick up all that trash. Oscar the Grouch would be loving this!

I hauled a recliner chair out of the trees and then had to pull it to the top of the road, before dragging it down the road to the truck about a hundred yards. For my efforts and obtaining the most random large trash object I received a 2007 CITO Geocoin. What's all that about, you ask? Well, a Geocoin is like our Johnny Cache Travel Bug that can travel around and visit caches and the miles can be logged. The picture to the right is the Geocoin. It's a yellow trash bag with Signal (the Geocaching mascot) driving a pickup full of trash. The saying is "Let's clean up our playing field!"

We are going to keep the coin and just take it along with us to geocaches and events. When we travel we will log it into caches, that way we don't lose the coin, but it still travels and goes places. Here's some pictures I stole from the geocaching website of our CITO event.

Before

After

Two full trucks!

After the CITO we all went out to eat at the China Buffet and pigged out. It's always nice to have some good food after such a messy event. Laura didn't make it to the trash pick up because she was presenting her research at the University. She joined us for the buffet though.

All that Geocaching talk gets us excited to go find some caches, so we decided to go find a few new caches around town. We found the two we went after and went home to relax. Saturday evening we started talking of where we wanted to cache on Sunday and decided to try to get to a cache that is north of Missoula in the mountains. We had quite an adventure to the cache, it involved a 14 mile ON WAY trip to the cache! Believe it or not, after 14 miles we didn't find the cache!! NO! Sometimes when we don't find a geocache we still log the geocache as a "Did Not Find" (DNF) so everyone can read about our adventure. Here's the log I posted for the cache, just for reference, XC is Laura and I am Tracker:

Where to start... We were hoping to get lucky and get this cache early in the season and get it out of the way, but as detailed in the log we were not thinking clearly, we might need to seek help instead of caches...

Well, we have been chomping at the bit to get to this cache and with the recent CITO event we were overwhelmed with caching. After a much needed slumber from the CITO we awoke this morning around 9 and thought "what cache would offer some good exercise today?" Without putting much thought into it, we loaded up the bikes into the truck and went off to the trailhead - rain and all. We left at 11:20 and it wasn't too long before Tracker realized his Santa Fe Huffy from the early 1990's wasn't gonna be as easy as it was in Nebraska, but that's another story. He ended up doing a lot of pushing and after encountering several snow drifts up to two feet deep we decided to ditch the bikes in the open meadow and make the last two miles on foot. The snow was sparse and wasn't much of a problem so we kept on going. When we reached the bridge after the meadow we encountered more snow than we had anticipated. There was close to three feet of snow on the bridge but did that stop us...? NOPE, keep going, we've come this far, why stop now? By the time we reached the bridge at 13 miles we were 'post holing' and making slow progress from the two feet of snow on the trail... However, there were a lot of open patches along the trail and we remained optimistic that the cache location might just have the same look, KEEP GOING! The rain was turning to snow at this point and the shorts and long sleeve shirt that Tracker was wearing were less than ideal for the conditions. We made it to the area of the cache just under four hours and then crossed the deep snow to what we figured was a large boulder, we couldn't tell the exact size because of the snow around it, but upon arriving discovered the snow around it had melted and there was an opening to possibly retrieve it!!! Hopes were high was we hung upside down from the snow to look under the rock, but the angles offered were just not good enough to spot anything resembling a cache. Tracker backed up and found a hole in the snow, he sank to his waist and decided the snow and cold was just about enough to qualify for a DNF. BRR! Even though we didn't find the cache, we were sufficiently happy to say we had been some of the first humans to the wilderness boundary for the 2007 season. We were soaked, muddy, cold, and VERY hungry! We made it back to our bikes and though our rears were raw from the ride in, we made excellent time getting out, just over 2 hours! We were past exhaustion when we made it to the truck at the trailhead and on the return ride the clouds broke and we had a nice ride with the sun and cool breeze - perfect. We stopped and got some pizza before getting home and cleaning up and chowing down!!! We've decided the next time we attempt to get to the cache we will be packing in and maybe bring some friends to share the fun - now to find some friends who are as crazy as we are!

On another note, the area around the cache was beautiful covered in snow. We took a lot of enjoyment knowing we were the only humans in the immediate area (last contact was at the 8 mile bridge) and the seclusion was much appreciated. We had to clear some trees off the trail and that was a nice break from the bikes. After ditching the bikes we encountered a lot of trees across the trail and they will be brutes to remove, so we detoured and let them be.

It will be a few days, but we will soon be making plans for our return trip. It's going to take a lot more than 4 feet of snow to keep us from returning. Our next log entry will be a big yellow smiling face!

Oh, and one last thing. XC found a dime on the trail about 3.5 miles from the cache, so we didn't go in vain!

I wish I would have taken my camera along, but we decided to travel lightly and try to get the 28 miles covered quickly. All we took was the GPS, extra batteries, and a few small snacks that fit in our pockets. No water, backpacks, cameras, or anything like that, we were trying to do it fast! A lot of people might think that 28 miles without water was a bad idea, but after so many years running track and cross country we became accustom to not having water during workouts or our long runs - as far as 15 miles.

Despite the fact we didn't find the cache, we had pretty high spirits. The four feet of snow at the cache was pretty awesome to see, and we are hoping to get back up to the cache this summer. Hopefully I can take the camera next time and get some pictures. In the mean time I think we will stick to caches under 5,000 feet elevation and let the snow melt before venturing back into the mountains. Until again

-=Nolan=-