2017 LCP NM Back-Country Champion... maybe

How did that happen? To be fair, every year I've geocached in New Mexico I have chased this leaderboard, and in 2013 I was actually quite close. I was in the top spot that year but Wolf11469 had some late-year finds that bumped him ahead of me. The next year we moved out of state, so LCP was not something I could partake in, but we came back in 2016 and I jumped right back into the game (see this blog post). That year I was only able to climb to 6th in the NM back-country leaderboard, but considering I was only in the state for half the year, this wasn't a bad showing. I hit some pretty high point caches, some really lonely ones that had gone unfound for quite some time.

This year, aside from January where I was near the top due to a fun geocache outing on new Year's day where I found a handful of fairly lonely caches, I was mostly in the 3rd to 5th rank position. The geocachers that were always ahead of me were Sandpig, sywy, budabeli and occasionally others were ahead as well. I had pretty much resigned myself to this ranking, but when I checked just the other day, some recent point activity between the eladers had cause d them to drop, and me to rise, and 'lo and behold, I was in the top spot!

2017 is over now, but the final point tally isn't final until January 15th, so I will need to wait until then to see if I retain this position. I know I didn't have any lonely finds in late December that are still waiting to be added to my score. I just have to hope that the other contenders do not have any. You can be sure, on January 15th, i will be checking back at lonelycache.com to see if I made it as the Top Back Country Geocacher in NM in 2017!

Winter caching in upsate New york

We were in upstate New York for the holidays this year. The last time we were here was in 2014, and I was anxious to check on my two geocache hides. Theoretically, I can ask family to check on these for me, but I stupidly hid both of them with high terrain ratings (3.5 and greater) and with my in-laws getting up there in years, neither location is really one I would be comfortable having them check for me anymore. But they know where they are now, and have contacts and I suppose if there was an issue, I could rope them into finding someone to help me out. But so far there hasn't been much need for this. Both caches, GC4348N and GC43EVW are pretty rural, off any main highway, and somewhat tricky puzzle caches. So the amount of traffic they get is extremely low. The two caches have a combined find count of 11 over 5 years, so if either of them gets a find in any given year, I'm pretty happy. And given this low find rate, maintenance needs are low. So I was surprised when I checked on GC4348N and found it missing. Would someone really have climbed down under this unassuming bridge and taken this little plastic container? I think it more likely that flood waters carried the cache away, my in-laws reported that the bridge was closed due to flooding last summer, and this very likely would account for the missing cache. Lucky for me, no one had searched for the cache since this flood, so I was able to get a new container in place. Hopefully, it can go another 5 years without any problem.

GC43EVW in good shape

Somewhat of a spoiler pic...

In general, I haven't had to worry about winter geocaching woes. Here in New Mexico, where we live now, we only get snow up in the high mountains, so you can simply find caches at the lower elevations that are free from snow. Not so in upstate New York. When I arrived, it was sleeting and there was already a foot of snow covering the ground. The sleet turned into a hard layer of ice, and then got covered by another foot of snow. This makes finding any geocache placed on the ground extremely difficult, if not impossible. Digging in the snow, even in the exact location where the cache is, may still be fruitless. Winter is definitely not the best time to find geocaches up here. But that doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means it requires all that much more effort.

I decided to test my winter caching abilities while out performing maintenance on my two geocaches. The first cache I went after,GC4QV91 , had a hint indicating it was at the base of a tree. At GZ there were several trees that it could have been and I dug around three of them before finding the frozen plastic container. It was actually not too difficult, but very very cold. unfortunately, the log had previously been a wet mushy pulp of peper, and was now a solid frozen block of un-signable ice. I guess that's another reason caching in winter is tough. Any wet log is bound to be un-usable.

How does one sign this?

My next two caches I stopped to find on my way back to the in-laws' I also found, although one of them was a nice dry magnetic key holder under a town bell. Definitely a winter friendly hide, although I had to post-hole through 20" of snow to reach the bell. Maybe winter caching isn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Rather than simply go after the random local hides that were around, I wanted to do something a bit more my style. A hike up a mountain with a rewarding viewt. An area that particularly caught by eye was Old Forge, a touristy Adirondack town nestled among lakes and mountain ridges. There are a number of short day hikes up to rocky ridge-tops most having a geocache on them. And it is only an hour's drive from our home-base. The only thing that gave me some pause was the intense cold-snap that hit right after Christmas. The window thermometer was down in the -20F to -30F range every morning and daily highs didn't even reach 0F. This is not what most people would consider reasonable hiking weather, and indeed my in-laws (and wife) thought I was crazy to even consider it. But I strongly believe, there is not bad weather for going outside, only bad clothing. As long as I was prepared, I could handle the cold. I had a good layering system, and warm winter jacket. I bought some chemical hand and toe warmers to keep the extremities from freezing and headed off early one morning to hike up Bald Mountain, one of the most popular day hikes in the Old Forge area.

I left fairly early in the morning, with temps showing -25F outside. I stopped in Old Forge to find the Webcam cache there, GC3C3A. This proved to be more challenging than I thought it would be since the posted coordinates for the webcam are actually about a mile from where the webcam is. Simply going to the coordinates (as I did) gets you no-where, you need to look up the name of the Hotel where the webcam is located and navigate there. I was a bit miffed about this, seems the CO should be able to correct this fairly easily, but no matter. I finally got to the right place and waited around for the webcam to refresh, taking this "charming picture".

Temps were only -11F at this point, the day sure was warming up! Webcam found (only my second one ever!) I made my way over to the Bald Mountain trailhead to start my hike. I was a little worried that parking would be a problem. Earlier in the week, I had dragged the family over to Pixley falls but we couldn't actually go in to see the waterfalls because the run-off and parking area were not plowed, and there wasn't enough shoulder on the side of the highway to park. I was hoping this wouldn't be the case at Bald Mountain, since it might mean having to park further away somewhere and hike a bunch of extra distance along the side of a road. Luckily, the parking area was nicely plowed, and I was the first person to show up to hike the peak this morning.

I had brought with me two pairs of snow-shoes, one large and one small. My thinking was that if the trail was covered in deep snow, the large pair would be handy. But as I got to the trail register, I found that the trail was already very well packed. So well in fact, that snowshoes were hardly necessary at all. I strapped on the smaller pair anyways, because I knew that near the summit I would be going off trail to find the geocaches there, and then the snow-shoes would be useful.

Good info to have while hiking in extreme weather (cold)

Well packed trail

Starting out at the trailhead

The hike up was beautiful, and predictably cold. My nose and cheeks stung from the bitter cold, but the rest of me stayed nice and toasty. In less than an hour I was at the summit enjoying amazing views of the frozen lakes and snow covered peaks.

Near the summit

There are two geocaches up on the summit and I intended to find them both. The first, an earthcache called Bald Mountain Balancing Rock, was pretty easy to get to, but harder to answer all the geology questions due to the snow cover. Some of the questions asked you to compare the balanced rock to the surrounding rock, but everything was covered in snow. I did the best I could, and the questions I couldn't immediately answer in the location I ended up doing a bit of online research to get answers.

Bald Mountain balanced Rock

The other geocache was an older ammo can cache. This one worried me in that I would have to dig through deep snow to find it. The fresh snow on the summit was about 16-20" deep, and it could have been really difficult to search the ground. Luckily, given the hint, and the hide location, I was able to find the cache quickly and easily. I left a set of chemical hand and foot warmers, and grabbed a pathtag.

GC4PA7D in good shape

Finally, I spent a bit of time at the Fire Tower on the summit, taking in the amazing views all around. I had the whole place to myself and reveled in the glory of being out on a frozen mountaintop all by myself. Took me back to my college days, when I would go winter hiking/climbing in the North East. It felt good to know I could still enjoy such activities.

Rondaxe Fire Tower

Panorama from within tower

 

Panorama of 3rd Lake

Since I had taken off my snow-shoes to climb the tower, I left them off for the descent hike. They really weren't needed at all for the packed trail. I passed a few other hikers starting up the trail as I got close to the trailhead, proving that I was not the only crazy person to be out hiking in sub-zero temperatures. But then, the well packed trail told me that as well. I do believe that hiking Bald Mountain in winter may be preferable to summer/fall, judging from the stories I've heard about hundreds/thousands of people hiking up every day. Having the mountain all to yourself is worth the chill.

After my nice hike, I met up with the rest of the family in Old Forge for lunch and to peruse the "Adirondack's Most General Store". I couldn't resist but order the "Mountain maniac" sandwhich from the restaurant. I would have loved to do more hiking in the area, and more geocaching, but I'll have to save that for another trip. I know we'll be back visiting family again, and now I can strike off to this relatively close area for adventurous hiking.

 I barely cached at all the rest of our trip except for finding a cache on 12/31/17 and one on 1/1/18 so that I could earn the souvenirs given out on these days. I dragged my father in-law with me to find a cache on 12/31 and we got pretty lucky to find, GC4M19Q, one of the closest geocaches around our area. The cache listing indicated it should be winter friendly, but it also indicated that it could be buried by snow banks since it was in a guard rail. Turns out it was the latter, but I dug into the snow bank at just the right spot to find the geocache right away. On the first of the New Year, we left the in-laws to head back home, driving to Syracuse to catch our flight early the next morning. I had solved a puzzle cache near the Syracuse airport for just this evening, and after checking into the airport hotel, but before returning our rental car, I made a quick trip out to look for GC2F628. I was hoping this would be an easy LPC cache, given the location of the hide in a strip-mall area, but it turned out to be in a small wooded section adjacent to a tire shop. Luckily, in Syracuse there was only a few inches of snow on the ground and after a bit of brushing away snow, I found the cache. A nice geocaching end to a wonderful trip in new York. And a promising geocaching start to the new year.

First cache of 2018!