I'm so embarrassed...
The cache gets its name because it is at the penultimate spot on
the hill we've come to call "Chicken Leg Hill." The name is derived
from the appearance of the hill when approaching from the south on
the Glenn Highway.
Note that the terrain is steep and slippery, with
NUMEROUS cliffs, rocks, steep locations, mud, swamps
and ponds in the immediate vicinity of the cache... and while there
are a lot of game trails, there is no obvious human trail or path
to the cache itself. Devils Club and mosquitoes are just a few of
the hazards. Other wildlife, including moose and bears are common
in the area.
About a year ago, I wanted to place a cache at this location. I
created a container, log, put a few goodies in, and headed out. In
the process of placing the cache, I was overrun by bloodthirsty
insects from another world, and essentially threw the container on
the ground, took some coordinates and ran back to my car before I
passed out from blood loss. The resulting cache, "The Leg of the
Chicken" has been visited by quite a few brave souls. During last
summer, some large animal (moose?) stepped on the container, and
the contents got rather wet (see the log notes).
As the snow melted this spring, I decided to make the trip to
"Chicken Leg Hill" a bit more interesting, by placing a cache at
the location I had intended all along... but keep "The Leg of the
Chicken" in place, since it had developed a small following of
local cachers that liked the location. So on April 21, I headed
back up Chicken Leg Hill with a replacement container for "The Leg
of the Chicken" and a new cache, to be placed where I had intended
all along. Thinking I was clever, I planned on making this new
cache a 'multi' by placing the coordinates on the inside lid of
"The Leg of the Chicken" and letting people visit the old cache to
get the coordinates for the new one.
Here's the embarrassing part...
- I wasn't the only person that thought that April 21 was a
particularly nice day for geocaching.
- Between the time I headed out on my Chicken Leg Hill expedition
to replace the container at "The Leg of the Chicken" (with the
coordinates for the new cache) and placed the new cache at my dream
Chicken Leg Hill location, and the time I got home and entered in
the new cache into the site, two other people went out and found
"The Leg of the Chicken", entered the coordinates for the new
cache, and proceeded to find it (and claim the FTF prize, a beat-up
ten spot that I bummed from my girlfriend, Callie).
- One of our caching colleagues, NorthWes, graciously decided to
honor us by finding "The Leg of the Chicken" for his 900th find,
and later, place his own cache on Chicken Leg Hill.
- When the cache reviewer looked at the new cache, he wouldn't
allow me to make it a multi, using "Leg of the Chicken" as the
intermediate location.
So I spent the next couple days trying to figure out how to make
this cache more interesting than just a standard cache, but I
didn't come up with a good idea... So I am listing it as a standard
cache... and as people will attest, it is worth the tangled,
bush-whacking, blood-sucking hike, just for the experience and the
views along the way.
So, in one short year, Chicken Leg Hill has become a rather
popular caching destination... sporting three caches and a
benchmark.
First to find: government-issued portrait of Alexander
Hamilton. which has been claimed (probably before I even got back
to my car) by snidly53. So, if you're going to be the first to find
after the official posting, it will be for pride only (I'm not
going back up there to stick ten more dollars in the cache)... and
I apologize for hosing up the posting process...
One suggestion: store your route in, or flag it (and remove
flags on the way out). The cliffs and steep sections seem much more
numerous on the way out than in. I stumbled three or four times
coming out traversing steep slopes.