GBA 4×4 trip to Clear Lake

Today I hit the road at 5:15 AM to head north to Clear Lake to meet up with a group heading into the hills north of the lake. By leaving that early I had clear sailing to Santa Rosa, where I stopped for breakfast at the Omelette Express. Besides being a tasty breakfast, there was a lot of it, and despite stuffing myself in anticipation of a very long caching day I couldn’t clean my plate.

I hit the turnoff to Clear Lake in Hopland with enough spare time that I stopped for a couple of caches along highway 175. Close to Hopland the road winds through a pretty area of vineyards and farmland, but soon turns into a windy road snaking through the mountains to Clear Lake.

I arrived at our designated meeting spot in Lakeport (a gas station) before anyone else, so I gassed up and popped over to nearby Jack’s place to grab a cache. By the time I returned the Peninsula contingent had arrived (Matt/mjp303, Ben/bthomas, Brad/geobrowns, Tom/MotorBug with passenger Chris/airsax). After they all gassed up we stopped at a Subway so MotorBug could get a sandwich for lunch, and of course, the rest of us found the nearest cache. As we headed for Bartlett Springs Road with mjp303 in the lead, he couldn’t resist stopping for a couple of caches on the way.

Once on the dirt, we hit three high terrain caches, with the most memorable being this one with near vertical faces. We were all over this rock and confused about the description and hint. Geobrowns finally braved one of the near vertical cliff faces and made the find.

We stopped at Bartlett Springs. Apparently a recent fire destroyed a small bottling plant (perhaps it was already abandoned).

A mile or so beyond Bartlett Springs I got a flat on my right front tire. It turns out something (probably a sharp rock) put a 1.5″ slice through the tread and steel belts. I had to run the rest of the weekend without a spare.

As we proceeded on we drove by Indian Valley Reservoir, which was extremely low. Noticing there was a terrain 5 kayak cache near the normal lake shore, we decided to drive out on the dry lake bottom and see how close we could get. We did fine getting there and finding the cache. But then the adventure started.

The following photos tell the story. First we had vehicles sliding sideways downhill in soft shale, and then getting stuck in some really gooey mud. We had to do a tandem tow to get them out.

The lake bed mudhole really slowed us down from our plan and we didn’t reach our next cache until after sundown. It was another terrain 4.5, so doing it by flashlight was even more of an adventure. Bthomas and mjp303 found the best approach and made the find. The next attempt was at a terrain 5 cache, and while bthomas made it to the top he couldn’t find the cache, before his headlamp began to fade.

On the drive back towards highway 20 we picked up another 4 caches, so my total for the day was 15 caches.

After checking into our motel (Travelodge) we headed to Kathies Inn for dinner. By the time we were done and back to the motel it was 9:30 PM or so, and I was beat.