Happy 47! Traditional Cache
BrewerMD: This one has been up here 10 years, time for it to go away. It is hard to believe that 10 years has passed, that I have been hitting the hills for that long. Hopefully I get another 10! The container has been removed.
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For those that have done my previous hides, you have probably figured out that I like to hike. During the winter months, the Chuckanuts are one of my favorite playgrounds. We are so fortunate to have these wonderful trails in our backyard here in Bellingham.
I hid this cache today to mark my 47th birthday. When I thought about what I wanted to do today, I couldn’t think of a better way to start a birthday than a nice walk in the woods. I grabbed Miranda (the dog-in-law) and up we went. This cache is near the overlook above the Pine and Cedar lakes. If you park at the main trailhead for Pine and Cedar, the walking distance is not great: 1.88 miles from car to cache. But if you have ever gone up the front trail to P & C, you know that there is an incline. An alternative route is to park at the North Chuckanut trail system parking lot on Chuckanut drive just south of Fairhaven. Distance from that trail head to cache is 4.2 miles, a nice ride on a bike up the Hemlock Trail. You can download a map of this trail system from the Whatcom County Parks website (visit link).
From the Pine and Cedar trailhead, follow the marked trail towards Pine and Cedar. At 1.76 miles you will come to a well marked Y in the road (48º 40.711, 122º 27.306). If you go right, it takes you down the Hemlock and just a short 0.8 mile walk to Raptor Ridge (GC13CNM). To get to the new cache, go left at this Y and walk approximately 60 paces to a trail off to the left of the main trail. Take this trail up to the cache, only about 0.1 mile away. At the crest of the hill there is a view point off to your right with great views of the islands. If you go approximately 100 paces further up the main trail, you will come to the rock overlook with views of Mt. Baker and the lakes down below (48º 40.650, 122º 27.121). The cache is NOT in a dangerous area, rather, about 40 paces past the overlook on the woods side of the trail. This is a forested area but my reception was +/- 24 feet using a Garmin 60CSx. The cache is within 6 feet of the trail and NO bushwacking is required. After finding the cache, you can continue along this trail another 0.4 mile to get to the lake (48º 40.708, 122º 27.021). There is treasure waiting there at the lake, so make sure to pick up Walk the Planks (GCY4VJ) to make the trip a two-fer.
The container is a large metal surplus flare container given to me by Sharp as a FTF prize on the Ostrom Nature Walk cache (GC16WHJ), he was even kind enough to stock the cache container with some supplies and many are in it now including a FTF coin, a lapel pin, a Portugal 1980 25 escudos coin, a Zimbabwe 1997 1 cent coin, a keylight and golfball. I added various items including my standard FTF prize, an LED flashlight and a whoopee cushion from the Great Ducky Escapade.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
haqre n ybt, haqre n Puneyvr Oebja gerr
Treasures
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