 August 8, 2009 by nelson crew (1420 found)
Well... here it is. A true caching benchmark, and a truly great experience.The idea was to come up and pick some huckleberries. One of my attorneys has a cabin up here somewhere and knows every inch of these mountains like the back of his hand. He showed us where to go (stay on the 22) and made sure we were very clear on getting to above 4000 feet this time of year. I made the rookie mistake of relying on the Nuvi instead of printing up some topo maps. Huge mistake on my part. Luckily I had been given such a thorough walk-through that I was able to back up the map view and get us where we needed by faking it. On the way a couple of young guys in a dune buggy nearly creamed us. They were going so fast that when they saw us and slammed on the brakes they nearly took a header into the upside wall. Yikes. Turns out that the spot I had coords for a) wasn't right on the road, as it appeared in Google Earth (but rather about 250 feet off), but also b) there weren't any huckleberries there. We did find some mountain raspberries, but there weren't that many of them, and the majority of them weren't looking too healthy. Ok, scratch that. This trip was two-fold in purpose; find some huckleberries and find the oldest cache in Idaho. Since plan A was out, let's move on the plan B. But how to get there? It's only a mile or so away... as the crow flies. These roads we're on now aren't even in the GPSr. That's what I busted out the handheld GPS and found out that I had the roads in the palm of my hand the whole time. Moun10bike, as part of his Northwest Trails project, not only had trails mapped, but had these mountain roads all mapped, too! Note to self - contribute more to the NW Trails project. Excellent - let's make a right here and a left here and... there's the junction! So I drive a 4x4. We were 1.25 miles from the cache with a serviceable road in a capable vehicle. But it was not to be. My mother had come along for the ride and she was VERY insistent that we were NOT going up that road. Ok, fine. I'm not getting this close to my goal without following through. I don't care if I have to hoof it the entire 1.25 miles uphill. Here's the keys, I'll be back. The boy and I scoot up ahead with the furball, and what do you know - about a quarter mile in all of a sudden the road is just overrun with huckleberries EVERYWHERE. We could have easily spent a whole day here and barely made a dent. Cache found - wow, awesome views. Today was overcast, so we didn't get the full effect, but still... I do believe I'll be bringing some others back here, so I'll see the whole thing yet. Started back down the hill and found my mom had actually made it 2/3rds of the way up and was stopped with my wife at a huge huckleberry patch. Sweet! Goals A AND B fulfilled, plus the dog and I got an awesome hike in. What a good day. I'll post the better pictures, but with the haze and low ambient light most of them didn't turn out. Took the jeep, left a couple of other trackables. Boo ya.
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