Sunday, July 27, 2008

Mt. Fanny / Moss Springs Campground - July 6, 2008

On the last full day of my vacation, my brother asked if I wanted to hunt the two remaining caches on my list for Mt. Fanny. I had wanted to go after these two caches since my arrival (technically they were the closest caches to the house), but my brother and Dad believed that there was still too much snow on the ground to travel up there.

We headed up Forest Service Road 6220 to a specified turn-off point for hunting It is a tree of secrets by Class A foam (GCYMAF). This was a two-stage multicache that involved a hike down an old ATV trail. The coords were good for both stages and the hike was nice.

After finding the cache, we made our way back to FS 6220 and continued east to Moss Springs Campground to hunt This ain't no cache and dash! by cache-n-dash (GC1CTP5). FS 6220 is a good gravel road with a lot of switchbacks.

We parked near the coordinates of the Moss Springs Trailhead and began the roughly 1.4 mile hike to the cache area. This was an extremely difficult hike for me as we started off at an altitude of 5500 feet and headed for a cache that was at roughly 6800 feet. There were times where I could only hike a couple of hundred feet before needing a break. The weather was nice, though, and there were only a few patches of snow after we reached about 6500 feet. We eventually made it to the cache site which was described on the cache page as "Vinny Viewpoint" and had a few remnants of what appeared to be an old Forest Service lookout tower.


My brother actually found the cache while I, as usual, was admiring the view of the valley. Normally I don't trade items anymore, but I took a book on Forest Service Lookout Towers and left my small swiss army knife with a small pill fob attached. I also accidently pocketed a geocoin that wants to travel across North America. That coin will get it's wish as it traveled 2500 miles across the country with me and will hopefully soon be placed in a local cache.


I was actually FTF on this cache even though it had been there a month. Last year, I was the FTF on a nearby (relatively) cache - Point Prominence Lookout by WR7X (GC13N7R). To this date, I am the only visitor that cache has seen.

Anyways, after taking some pictures and drinking some Gatorade, we hiked back down to the truck (off-trail).

This ain't no cache and dash! by cache-n-dash (GC1CTP5) ended up being the last cache I found while on vacation.

---

The book on Forest Service Lookout Towers is actually quite interesting. It details the history of the fire lookout towers that were in wide use a few decades ago.

No comments: