Fugads Geocaching Blog: WWFMXV: Flashing the Frog!

I decided to host a flash-mob event this year to coincide with the World Wide Flash Mob (WWFM) that Podcacher organizes every year. This year is the 15th year of the WWFM, so WWFMXV. Usually people organize these in a way to get the most participants possible, because the more the merrier right? And I could have done that. But there was a location in the Sandia mountains that I was just itching to visit, and the WWFMXV flash mob gave me just the pretense to do so. The Sandia mountains have all sorts of granite towers and ridges and visiting these has been on my to-do list for quite some time. Since this was a geocaching event though, I selected one specific formation called The Frog. Because... well Signal The Frog.... right? It's a geocaching thing.

With my location selected, I published the flash mob per the directions from the WWFM website. GC7PBM4: Flashing the Frog. For our timezone, the event needed to occur at 11am. I then sat back and waited for the "Will Attend" logs to fly in... OK, so I didn't really expect many "Will Attend" logs, but a few geocachers did post their intentions so I knew I had at least some interest.

As the day of the event drew near I made some plans for how to actually get a group of people on top of the frog. I had never been there before, so I brought all sorts of climbing gear to make sure we'd be able to get up whatever obstacles were in our path. I also posted a few announcements to the event page to coordinate our approach. It is roughly an hour hike to reach the base of the frog (more if you come up from the valley as opposed to dropping down from the crest parking).

June 9th arrived and I got a very early start to reach the parking area by 7am. I was expecting just two other geocachers who were going to meet me there, budabeli and Sandpig, both Albuquerque locals. A third geocacher showed up though, wolf11469, a very welcome addition as he had actually been on top of the frog before. I made sure we were properly attired, and then we were off down the trail.

Proper attire to Flash the Frog

While it should only take an hour to reach the base of the frog, it took us two, and this is mostly my fault. I wanted to stop and find all the geocaches on our route down the trail. This was my first time in this area and I wasn't going to pass all these up. The other three, being Albuquerque locals, had already found most of the caches on the route, but they humored me. We passed several hikers coming up the trail, and I got some funny comments for my frog-attire. I guess it is not every day you see someone with a frog plushy strapped to their head. By 9am, we were at the base of the Frog and had to break off from the trail and up a brushy gully. The brushy gully isn't the only way to reach the summit of the frog, there is an option to climb directly up the rock faces. I briefly considered this (I did have the gear), but the lack of climbing experience from the rest of my party ruled this out as being feasible. So a bushwhack it was. An hour later we were at the final summit block and it was time to set up some ropes for a safe ascent. The last 30 ft of the summit block are class 5 climbing, meaning it is technical with bad fall potential. This is the kind of stuff people generally rope up for, although this climb is probably only rated 5.1, so most "climbers" probably wouldn't bother. But I had all the gear with me, and we were going to do it right-safe. Also, I wanted to set up a picture of us on the top, and having the gear would be needed for that too.

Summit of the Frog

I solo-climbed to the top, and then set up a top-top anchor for the rest of the party. I really wanted to get us all on the summit at the same time, but the summit was actually quite small, maybe a 5ft wide boulder. Having everyone up here safely and comfortably didn't seem like a very good option. So instead we took turns climbing up to the top with the safety of the rope. At 11:00 we set-up for our WWFMXV picture.

Flashing the Frog! Upper left: wolf11469, Lower left: Sandpig, Right: Fugads, photographer: budabelli

Mission accomplished! We took great satisfaction knowing that geocachers all around the world were at that moment also doing crazy flash mob events. The rest of the day was spent hiking back up to the crest via a different route, to find more geocaches of course, and enjoy the fantastic weather. Here are a few more pictures from the day: