Bangers & Mash enter the Black Mountain Hall of Fame

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The ones that are not smiley faces are actually not active or are geocaches we have placed….so this is the complete Black Mountain Series.

It started a couple of months back when FlagMan set out  challenge for people to complete all the geocaches that were located in a certain area. Lots of beautiful mountains and trails in San Diego, with thousands of geocaches on those trails. So why not set the geocaching hike adventure challenge to find them all…

This was a nice challenge, but Bangers & Mash were only at ~800 geocaches and no way or time to go and get the remaining ~2000 on the complete list. This would be more of a goal in 2 years than in 2 months.

But last week we then got passed the M.A.S.H geocache event details….on June 6th there was an awards ceremony for all the geocachers that had completed one or more of the Hall of Fame series in their geocaching hike adventures.

We checked out the names and saw Black Mountain. A local for us that we had done many geoccahes – indeed even had placed a few there. With 8 days to go to the geocache event we needed 20 more. But this included 4 puzzle geocaches and 2 multi-caches.

We looked at each other and our calender for the week (which included hosting a goodbye party, a race in Mount Laguna, and my birthday, and some deadlines at work) and just shook our heads. Absolutely no chance to squeeze in a hike adventure to make the Black Mountain Hall of Fame.

But then we just kept saying…”if we get up at 5am and do 2 hours before work”. “The sunset is at 7:30pm so we could get a few in the last hour before this on Friday….”

And off the last week of geocaching hike adventure began….

• Sunday - 5 hours on the mountain trekking and bushwhacking including #1000
• Monday – 1 sneaky puzzle geocache before work
• Tuesday – 2 hours at 5am for the multi-cache
• Friday - 2 hours of sunset geocaching to get the puzzles
• Sun June 6th (day of M.A.S.H geocache event) – 4 hours of geocaching 4 different areas of the mountain to pick up the last one in each area.

WOO-HOO!! We made it to the Black Mountain Hall of Fame! And got an award at the M.A.S.H award ceremony. The M.A.S.H reference is to the old tv series and was also a costume event, so double fun.

If you are interested in going to Black Mountain – here is a link to the trail map.

You can search an area for geocaches by typing in a zip code or a city or even coordinates and it will show you what geocaches are in the area, what type they are, and whether you have found them or not. When you find a geocache, the symbol will become a smiley face representing the fun you had in finding it.

This series we did in San Diego is an awesome trip on a bike ride (greatness #2).

Series: Power Cache Power Trail

The best thing about the adventure was when we got back and got to see a geocaching map full of smiley faces Yeah!!!

I also just completed a geocache series about the Top 40 cachers in San Diego and it made me think – where am I on that list and what are my cache statistics?

Ran it through Geocache Statistics website and here are the results! (note – formatting is not great due to name change…it will catch up eventually)

Getting into the Top 1000 in California will be a great achievement!

A 5/5/ geocache is one that is Level 5 difficulty and Level 5 terrain. The scale is from 1-5 so it is the hardest one out there. I’m not sure how many exist but in the San Diego area I think you are looking at maybe 10 of these.

The email crew decided to make it a geocache event and hike together to the location. We scheduled it for Jan 2nd to welcome in the new year and to start getting those extra holiday cookies off our bodies.

I’m not sure what I expected, the reviews suggested it was quite a difficult hike, but I’m young and reasonably athletic, so no problem, right?

Well, this ended up as a 9 hour hike in the attempt to get the 5/5 geocache El Capitan GCDAO6

Alas, it was not to be today – but the geocaching crew that went did get loads of caches on the way up – and are determined to go up again in a few weeks.

Happy New Year – this was a great 14 mile hike – great way to start the year!!

el cajon

Map your trip with EveryTrail

Here is the photo collage from a trip to Tucson geocaching in Arizona.

It was VERY HOT at 116 degrees at the hottest but always better for the heat then geocaching in the snow…

If you want to know more about how to use this geocaching tool – Here’s a link to a blog entry with some tips and tricks about the feature from Google Picasa

This geocache blog entry is a quick lovers guide for the best iphone geocaching app by GroundSpeak. I did a full review of 3 geocaching units – Garmin, Blackberry and the iPhone here.

I pull out my phone, load up the application, and search the local area, find one and go!

The developers are making updates on a regular basis and welcome feedback in the geocache iphone forum

For instance, they added the ability to post the log file directly to the website and not store it as a field note, meaning you needed to take an extra trip to the web site.

This is soooo worth the $9.95!! Read more at official geocaching website

I have seen this style several times. Sometimes it is a real rock and sometimes it is a plastic rock that just seems to look out of place with the others in a pile. This one was a little different…see if you could have found it.

Can you see the rock next to the cactus where the geocache hide is?

How about now?

Here it is – very clever, isn’t is! The unusual geocache was actually in a real rock where a hole had been drilled into the rock and then hidden.

If you want to read about some unusual or unique geocache hides, you might be interested in the Saguaro Cactus or the Lamp Post

When in Tucson, I went to the “Leaning Towers of … Arizona” Earth cache which shows you the pinnacles that have been formed over millions of years from different types of minerals and the natural elements of water and wind.

To log the cache – you needed to ‘measure the verticality’ of the pinnacles. What does that mean? Not quite sure….but then the geocacher required you to make a plumb line….what? Here’s the description given…

So I rummaged the tourist backpack and came up with…a carbinger clip, a hairband, and a bottle of water….and put together this below….quite proud of myself – this Earth Cache made me work for it!

This geocache blog post is about finding an EarthCache geocache whilst in Tucson for a geocaching vacation

Interested in knowing more about EarthCache geocaches? This blog entry talks about the certificate levels and this is an example of an Earthcache in Zimbabwe, Africa.

Geocaching took me on the Catalina Highway in Tucson – and to this rock on the edge of a tourist pullout.

What an amazing adventure to have a picture and experience like this….and yes at the base of the rock is a geocache!

This geocache blog post is about the Tucson Geocaching Adventures that took me to fantastic places

In this geocache blog post I was driving along this road but had to fight the traffic with the Tucson geocaching locals…asked them to ‘moo’ve off the road