As you search for this well-hidden cache, look around you and enjoy the scenery. You’re standing at a crossroads of geology, ecology, and human history. Reading this post carefully will help you to fully appreciate the remarkable setting.
Humans have lived in this region for more than 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. Semi-nomadic tribes hunted and fished, living off the abundance of the land and moving seasonally between the lowlands of Puget 
Sound and the high meadows of Mount Rainier. Several American Indian tribes still live in the area, and their names are literally all over the map: Cowlitz, Nisqually, and Puyallup. Pioneer settlers arrived in the 1850s and clashed with the native inhabitants, sometimes violently. The most infamous massacre of the Indian Wars occurred just a few miles south of here, when as many as 30 Indian women and children were killed in the night by a band of soldiers and vigilantes led by Hamilton Maxon. Beginning in the 1860s, explorers passed through this area in search of railroad routes and profitable natural resources, including such men as James Longmire, Charles Packwood, Thomas Van Eaton, and, on his way to climb Mount Rainier, Philemon Beecher Van Trump. By the 1890s crude roads had been built, and the forests rang with the lumberman’s axe and the locomotive’s whistle. Today, many of the lumber mills have been replaced by tourist destinations and sites for outdoor recreation, including Pioneer Farm, Northwest Trek, Pack Forest, Alder Lake Park, and Mount Rainier National Park. Geocaching is growing in popularity, too, promoted by local artisans including Bobo49, Crystlcryptr, ohjoy!, and Ranger Smith.
The geologic origins of this landscape, of course, extend much farther back in time. The Cascade Mountains rising to the east were formed of prolific volcanic activity and vast lava flows beginning 30 million years ago. Mount 
Rainier, less than a million years old, is simply the latest generation of such volcanoes (and Mount St. Helens is even younger). The volcanoes coexisted with great glacial ice sheets stretching through the Puget Sound lowlands, which at their farthest extent merged with the rivers of ice flowing off Mount Rainier just a few miles east of here. The last ice age ended only 15,000 years ago, and the old moraines and valleys were soon blanketed with the lush forests and streams you see today. But it was not always peaceful. Mount Rainier is still an active volcano, and its periodic eruptions have repeatedly dusted the soil with volcanic ash and filled the valleys with mudflows. The largest of these, just 5,600 years ago, was so vast that the flows backwashed up the Ohop Valley, a tributary of the Nisqually River clearly visible below you from this vantage point. The valley’s flat floor and fertile soil are the results of this epic event. In the most recent geologic era, geocaching deposits have appeared, and can be seen at many local sites including Eatonville, Mill Pond Park, and Sunshine Point.
These epic geologic forces have created an environment that supports a rich ecological diversity. Much of the valley bottom is wetlands, and even the parts that are farms and ranches today regularly flood with winter rains and 
spring snowmelt. Pacific tree frogs (Hyla regilla), western red-backed salamanders (Plethodon vehiculum), and other amphibians can be found in abundance. Raccoons (Procyon lotor) ply the waters looking for food, and are stalked by bobcats (Lynx rufus), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), and even an occasional mountain lion (Felis concolor). Blacktail deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) and elk (Cervus elaphus) overwinter here. By day, northern harriers (Circus cyaneus) wheel overhead in search of Townsend’s voles (Microtus townsendii) and by night, great horned owls (Bubo virginianus). If you’re lucky, you may spot a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) or two flying overhead, a species found on the federal Threatened and Endangered Species list. Fish include rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Chinook salmon (Oncorhyncus tshawytscha), and Clupea rubra, a Species of Significance. The rare and unique hopping crow (Corvus petrina) can sometimes be seen geocaching in the area.