I've had this idea to hide a long multi cache on the
Winsor Trail, outside of Santa Fe, since I first hiked some portions of it. The trail is 22.8 miles long and goes from Cowles, NM to Tesuque, NM. It crosses over a nice high mountain pass between Santa Fe Baldy and the Santa Fe Ski basin, and some of the sections of it are very popular. indeed, I first hiked a section with my family when going up to Nambe lake. Over the year I found myself on hikes doing portions of the trail, and thinking to myself, "I bet I could hike this entire trail in a day".
Well that day finally came, on one of my off-Fridays. After getting my new GPS, I needed a good long hike to test it out on and it was time to tackle the Winsor trail. My plan was fairly simple. I would drive to the Cowles trailhead very early in the morning, and hike up over the high mountain pass, and then down to Tesuque, arriving around the time my wife would be getting off work. She would then pick me up. We'd have to retrieve the car at Cowles, so to make this more fun, I stashed most of our camping gear in the car that I left up there and we would have a little fall camping trip for the weekend. It sounded like a decent plan to me....
My hike got off without a hitch. This would be my second attempt at hiding a big long multi cache and I was prepared with a nice final container, and a dozen small pre-form tubes to use as stages along the way. My
first attempt didn't end that well though. After much planning and hiding, the whole cache (all 9 stages) was
stolen/taken. And only five days after it was published! This one would be about the same number of stages, but a much longer hike, more than double actually.
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| Starting the hike near Cowles |
After a couple miles of hiking I hid the final at a spot with a suitably nice view. I left an unactivatted trackable as FTF prize as well as some other nice goodies.
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| View near the final |
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| Between Final and next/previous stage |
The weather was nice and cool, but there was a pretty stiff breeze. more like a howling wind at times. This kept me pretty cool, but made me worried a bit that a storm would blow in and dump on me.
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| Nice aspen grove near Stage 8 |
My approach to this multi was to hide stages roughly 2-3 miles apart and have each stage be at a location that is significant. By significant, I was thinking a stellar view, or cool stream crossing, or neat rock formations, or beautiful meadow... basically a spot where if you were hiking the trail, you'd think to yourself 'this is a great spot to stop for a break'. At least that is what i had in mind. Some portions of the trail I hadn't been on before, so i didn't really know where the nice spots would be along these sections. And after hiking a suitable distance I often found myself wanting to place a stage where I was rather than keep going further. And a few times, I passed by locations that would have been great thinking that I needed to put a bit more distance between stages.
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| One of the many trail junctions. Still haven't been down the holy Ghost trail.... |
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| An old trail junction not shown on the updated trial maps, but still on some older maps. This trail would have made a nice shortcut for the first few miles of the Winsor trail. poh well. |
One of the nicest spots along the trail is Spirit lake, a remote alpine lake that is pretty deep into the Pecos Wilderness. According to literature, it is a popular backpacking destination and I can see why. There was also an unfound geocache there,
GC77WWW, which I was keen on grabbing the FTF on.
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| Stage 7 near Spirit Lake |
Stages 5 and 6 were along the very popular section of trail between the Ski basin and Santa Fe baldy junction. This portion of the trail was all pretty wooded, and there were also a fair number of existing geocaches along the trail that I had to work around, so my hides for these stages weren't all that spectacular. But what are you going to do right?
Let's just say, this is a pretty long hike. It was later in the day than i thought it would be when I hiked into the Santa Fe Ski basin parking area. The trail actually skirts just around the parking area. I seriously considered calling my wife and having her pick me up there, and doing the rest another day. But then my determination to complete the whole hike set in. The rest was downhill afterall, should be a piece of cake right? But also... hmm.. are those rain clouds moving in?
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| I found this sign amusing, and might have to come up with a geocache hide around it.... |
There were some cool spots that I should have hid stage 4 at, but I had passed them by and then ended up hiding stage 4 in a rather lame spot. It is even near an access road making it easy to get if someone were breaking up the stages into separate hikes. Again, all I could do was shrug this off. I have no way of knowing how geocachers will actually tackle this cache.
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| Huge stick fort dounf along the trail |
Stage 3 was in a slightly better spot, near a rock outcropping and just out of siight from the main trail. I saw a few mountain bikers down this way, doing the Borrego trail loop maybe? There were also another
geocache for me to find down here, which I happily made a small detour to get.
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| Getting very tired... junction near Borrego trail |
On the down side, it started to rain a little and I was getting quite sore and chaffed from all the miles. At the Chamisal junction, I still had 3-1/2 miles to go, but I was wipe.
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| Chamisal trail junction... almost done |
The sun was setting as I reached the Tesuque trailhead and called my wife to come pick me up. The final count on stages was 9, including the final. Stretched out over 22.8 miles that's about 2.5 miles per stage. A darn good multi cache if you ask me. Now... who's going to go find it?
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