Dodge Ridge Traditional Cache
planehappy: I do not have the time to come up this way to check on it due to work and school. Letting this one go.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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The Original Story of Dodge Ridge
In 1947, Earl Purdy was operating a profitable general store and gas station between the towns of Ripon and Manteca. “One morning he was drinking coffee at a grocery store in Long Barn when neighbors mentioned that the US Forest Service had begun soliciting bids for development of a ski area at nearby Dodge Ridge.”
Challenge and change was not new to Purdy. The son of a forest ranger, he had graduated with a degree in architecture from the College of the Pacific then went on to be a teacher, truck driver, highway patrolman, and professional violinist.
Purdy had been looking for a new business, something in the mountains to be closer to his family. He didn’t know much about the ski industry. He’d only picked up the sport during his forties after his children began to take lessons, but he had a lot of energy and common sense.
He put his name down along with a one hundred dollar fee and forgot about it. Three months later the Forest Service contacted him to see if he was interested. It was a shock.”
He drove to where he thought the ski area should be built, pulled out a matchbook and sketched the layout of the resort. When the final project was completed, the plans looked exactly as he’d drawn on the inside of the matchbook.”
Dodge Ridge opened in the fall of 1950 with one state-of-the-art chairlift and three surface lifts. Twenty-seven million board feet of timber were cut to clear runs. Facilities consisted of a seven hundred car parking lot and two-story day lodge, ski shop and dining room. In all, Purdy‘s initial investment came to $250,000!
On its opening day, three thousand skiers flocked to Dodge Ridge. Tickets sold at three dollars for an all day lift pass and one dollar for a rope tow pass. Purdy never looked back. Within just a two month ski season, Dodge Ridge attracted nineteen thousand patrons. The next year numbers increased to twenty-five thousand visitors. The ski resort grew into the driving force for an awakening sport that helped change Tuolumne County into one of California’s most popular recreational spots.
Purdy only reported one bad year, 1963, when snow didn’t arrive until March. At age seventy, Purdy finally decided to sell Dodge Ridge. Frank Helm and his family bought the resort in 1976 and have remained steadfast in the resort’s traditions. Earl Purdy
passed away in 1991.
Fifty years after Earl Purdy’s matchbook-drawn ski resort was born, Dodge Ridge now offers sixty trails spread over 815 acres and accessed by twelve lifts.
This area originally had a cache placed by SonoraZark. When he moved from the area, we adopted it and replaced the container which had been muggled. Soon after, the container vanished again, leading us to believe that the maintenance crew for Dodge Ridge did not approve of it. Since the cache is now a totally different container and in a totally different spot, the old cache is archived and this one takes its place.
The original cache was an all weather cache, still findable even when the area was covered with snow. This cache is a decon container and might be more of a challenge but it's not on the ground, so there's hope. It is most easily accessed from the upper level of the parking lot.
During ski season, please use extreme stealth because this spot is swamped with muggles. During the summer, you should have the place pretty much to yourself! Please replace cache so it is not easily seen.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Hccre cneg bs znamnavgn ohfu arkg gb cbyr.
Treasures
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