I’m tired! Justifiably so after a 14 mile, 7.5 hour hike in Pleasanton Ridge, but there were 6 new caches up on the North Ridge trail that hadn’t been logged yet. Dan (geodanimal) planted these last Tuesday, and they were approved Thursday night. I really wanted to be first to find on these, and could have gone up alone yesterday, but since Dan wanted to go (again!) I waited until today. Clearly it wasn’t a problem. I guess it takes a while to plan and mount an expedition up there.
We started hiking from the Long View trailhead before 10 AM, heading for the first cache. After getting to the top of the ridge, we hiked along the Ridgeline trail and came across the carcass of a buck a few yards off the trail. The hind quarters had been chewed off. I think it was about a day old, and could well have been a mountain lion kill. If I had been alone, I would have had serious concerns.
Because of private property boundaries, we had to hike down to Sinbad Creek, then along the creek until the junction of Shady Creek trail, and then climb back up to the ridge. As I approached Geodanimal’s Shady Creek Cache I saw a likely location, but my GPSr put me about 20 feet south in open grass. Knowing that was unlikely I started searching around the downed tree and shortly after found it at 11:40 AM.
Continuing on, we climbed some more up Shady Creek trail to Geodanimal’s Shady Creek Hill. Now this one gave me a bit of a problem. It was under a massive oak tree and the GPSr didn’t work so well. The container is described a a Dcon container and that caused me to look in particular locations, but I couldn’t find it. After a while, I decided to use the hint, which made it pretty obvious, and Janet quickly made the find, because she got there first, at 12:02 PM.
On top of the ridge is a tall, dual-tower antenna. Geodanimal’s Valley View is hidden in a tree close to the base of the tower. This would have been an extremely quick find if I had read the full description. As it was, I went in circles for a little bit. Found it at 12:25 PM. We sat here on the trail to eat lunch while taking in the view of the valley spread out below us.
At this point we had to take the North Ridge trail, which is single track, and obviously gets very little use. To get to Geodanimal’s Loop Trail Cache we had to descend a ways down the Loop Trail (duh!). This one was very easy to find, especially since something had uncovered the plastic jar. (Well, actually, even if the jar was covered it would have been obvious). Found at 1:02 PM.
We then backtracked back up to the North Ridge trail and headed off to Geodanimal’s Diablo Vista. This one was also quick. Not many places where it could be (a Dcon container). Found at 1:27 PM.
Geodanimal’s Have a Seat is in the extreme north-east corner of the park. The ammo can was easy to find. While it’s under dense tree cover, the title narrows the hiding place down. Found this one at 1:48 PM.
To get back to the car, we headed down the Mariposa trail to Sinbad Creek and then retraced our steps back over the ridge, which seemed tougher now that we were over 10 miles into the hike.
On the way back we stopped so Dan could find Tour de Tank (he was 3rd to find, right after me).
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