Bobber says,Please be water safe in and around the water by wearing your lifejacket. Life jackets are important even in the winter months when New Mexico has lost visitors on occasion to hypothermia. Bobber hopes you will always swim with a friend and never swim alone.
This is an easy-access cache, so plan to park and grab. The parking area is open from 8AM to 3PM, but you can park at the gate. there is a bathroom which is always open and it is easy to walk from the gate if locked. It is in a Ziploc screw-on lid, quart sized container with a Geocaching symbol on the top. Its contents started with a log book, lifejacket shaped beverage cozy, ranger badges, a water safety coin purse, easy wash off temporary tattoos of one of Bobber’s water safety friends and a safety message, a water-proof registration or fishing license pouch, pen and pencil. However, you should bring your own writing tool anyway.
Cochiti Lake is located on the Rio Grande about 50 miles upstream from Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Rio Grande is the fifth longest river in North America, and among the 20 longest rivers of the world. From its origins high in the Rocky Mountains, it travels 1,900 miles and drops more than two miles before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.
Cochiti Lake borrows its name from the people that have occupied the present site continuously for over seven hundred years. Cochiti Dam operates in concert with three other Corps flood and sediment control projects-Galisteo, Jemez Canyon and Abiquiu Dams.
Cochiti is one of the ten largest earthen fill dams in the United States. It stretches 5.5 miles and rises 251 feet to impound the waters of the Rio Grande and Santa Fe Rivers. Construction of the dam was authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1960. In November 1965, a Memorandum of Understanding was drafted and entered into between the Corps of Engineers and the Cochiti Pueblo. Originally, the dam was authorized for flood and sediment control but later included a recreation pool. The dam was constructed between 1965 and 1975 at a cost of $99.5 million.