Wandering In Nevada - April 2019

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Batting A Thousand - Confessions of a Geocacher

I remember when the first handheld GPS units were introduced for sale to the public. Adept at map & compass navigation skills, we were eager to see how these contraptions could aid our outdoor pursuits. A friend who worked for the USFS bought a Garmin unit, loaned it to me, asked me to figure out how to use it, and if it proved useful he'd purchase a few for his crews. The Lady & I and a close friend, Mike, spent a weekend wandering and climbing through Desolation Wilderness and putting the unit to work. The key I was after was the ability to move back and forward with map, compass, and GPS unit. Building an understanding of coordinate systems and the different map datums helped get all three to speak the same language. We were heavily involved with search and rescue at that time and were also land navigation instructors for several organizations. We bought a handheld GPS unit and entered the battery age.

Soon after, a rocket scientist friend, Grant, introduced us to the new game of geocaching.

Grant was into handheld GPS because his rocket motors put the global positioning satellites into orbit. He had hidden a couple of geocaches on local mountaintops and invited us to find them. The Lady and our friend, Mike, spent the Lady's summer break days searching for caches. They became dedicated geocachers. I was instructed to be their scribe on the website to log their finds and to help in finding new posted caches in our area and so I learned about the Internet. The geocaching website was the first time "ski3pin" appeared as a username, the Lady's handle. Mike was "old free heel."

We were active the first years and then slowly lost interest. In the early years, to us it seemed, geocachers placed caches at interesting spots, fun places to visit. Times changed, many of the newer caches were uninteresting to us so we moved on. And, besides, we always are not at a loss to find other fun things to do.

Our friends Muir Trek & Outdoor Woman remain avid geocachers. On our last visit to their new spread in Montana they presented us with a gift, a one thousand geocache coin. Our stats had long ago stagnated at 940 finds. Years back they had bought this coin to present to us, anticipating us to soon reach this milestone. They gave up, but held on to it, and then decided to give it to us anyway.

We needed to make amends. We could not keep a geocaching coin we did not earn. We had a free weekend. We could make our good friends happy. We'd head into Nevada. Could we reach that magic 1000 number in two days?

We left home predawn on Saturday morning with our first stop breakfast at the Roadrunner Cafe in Dayton, Nevada, a small neighborhood kind of place and an environment you can sometimes feel like an outsider. The usual line of older men were at the counter, comfortable sipping at their coffee, mopping up syrup with pancakes, and taking in the conversation. The place was full this early morning and with the hard walls and ceiling, it was loud. Add in the rock music on the radio and our ears hurt. The conversation was animated and punctuated with sudden sharp cackles of laughter from the waitress. Discretion forbids me to share the surprising topic bantered about. Our breakfast was good  but we were happy to get outside and back into quiet.

Geocache number one was under bushes alongside highway 50 near the "Welcome to Dayton" sign. The second cache was exactly the kind that caused us to lose interest in geocaching - it was up in the spoils dump on the hilltop overlooking Dayton, a trashy hangout for kids drinking and a place to walk your dog with no need to pick up its feces. It was somewhere in a pile of rocks. We did not find it.

The caches improved as we headed east. We also found a new highway we could stay on forever.

Unfortunately it was also a highway we could not get off of. With a fence in between the north and south bound lanes, there was no way to turn around. Once again, discretion forbids me to share how we handled this problem.

Staying on main routes is not our style, so I had added as many caches as I could in backcountry locations. Our favorite was on a point overlooking Adrian Valley south of the Carson River.

The lion rises above Churchill Station Spring, an old stop along the Carson & Colorado Railway.

We were surprised to find surface water in Adrian Creek.

Next we crossed the railroad tracks. Southern Pacific bought the Carson & Colorado. The northern 140 miles of the route was converted from narrow gauge to standard gauge in 1905. This was mostly due to the mining boom in Tonopah.

The Lady loves to climb. Our truck is visible to the right in the distance.

She is never without her see mores.

We returned to the truck and discovered it was 4 pm, a good time to search out a spot to camp for the night. The requirements were a high spot with a view and no chance of neighbors. A side road climbed to a saddle with just enough room to park.

The long shadows of early evening were perfect for proper relaxation.

Fort Churchill along the Carson River was below us to the north. I was excited about our location because we were on the start of the Sonora/Walker River Route  of the California Trail. In 1852 a group from the Gold Rush town of Columbia enticed immigrants on the California Trail to try a new route over what would become Sonora Pass bisecting the Sierra Nevada Crest and lead them to the Columbia area. The route left the Carson River, climbed a hill, dropped into Adrian Valley, then intersected the Walker River where it began the climb over the Sierra crest.

We walked after dinner along the old route. We listened for the sounds of stock grazing, groups gathered around cooking fires, and maybe, the sounds of children playing - voices from the past.

We climbed the last hill overlooking the Carson River just as darkness came.

The night was quiet. The overnight temperature dropped only to the low 40's, allowing us to sleep with the windows open all night. Nevada spring mornings can be spectacular.

Our geocaching route took us approximately along the old Sonora Trail. We stopped along the West Walker River south of Yerington. We imagined how lush the vast Mason Valley would have been welcomed by those first immigrants so long ago.

We reversed course now and turned downstream along the Walker after it joined with the East Walker. We made our way south to the shores of Walker Lake. We had cell signal so we texted the geocaching countdown to our friends Muir Trek & Outdoor Woman - 997, 998, 999..........................

Our last cache of the day was appropriate enough, "The Old Guy and the Crapper".

Our mission was complete. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon. We filled up with gas in Hawthorne and headed south to higher terrain. We knew a lonely spot, our kind of place to spend the night.

The wind shaped clouds told of high winds aloft, a sign of a coming storm due in Monday.

I cannot overstate how much we love nights spent in solitude at places like this. We walked well into the night but soon even the bright half moon that center punched the sky above was dimmed by the building cloud bank.

We returned home Monday - just beating the storm - pleased that we had made our friends happy and finally earned that coin after so many years. And, on top of that we had spent another weekend in Nevada!