Big Rock Candy Mountain Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Traditional cache near Ramshead Hill, aka "Big Rock Mountain" to the lil' Jethros. BYO candy!
On the Cross-Fells trail. Easy for kids and no bushwacking required. Looking for a 6" x 6" L & L camo container.
Ramshead Hill is the highest point in Lawrence Woods. At the top, a short distance from the cache, you can still see the concrete pads of the Lawrence Tower that once stood here years ago. From a 1935 publication:
THE iron tower on Rams Head Hill, more commonly called the Lawrence Observatory, is one of the chief goals of all the walkers of the southern Fells. General Samuel C. Lawrence, delighted with a similar tower in Maine, determined to raise one of his own on the highest hill in his woodlands. He started the work February 24, 1898.
Mr. Lyman Sise, the architect of the tower, was perhaps the first man to initiate the custom of skis in our Fells, where skis and snowshoes are now both so popular. In spite of constant supervision, so heavy a storm swept down upon the partly completed tower that the uprights were blown down and the work had to be started all over again. The work was finally completed an exact year from the date of its start, February 24, 1899.
A most interesting study of all the surrounding country may be made from this windblown summit, for the tower standing on a hill two hundred twenty-nine feet above sea level lifts the spectator to a height of three hundred ten feet, and gives a view hardly equalled in eastern Massachusetts.
Guided by the compass directions on the corners, one can orient oneself and read the horizon. To the north-west on a clear day is the blue cone of Mt. Monadnock, to the west the long line of Wachusett, on the south Great Blue Hill with the tiny observatory on the top and on the east the ocean.
To the west and southwest the remarkably even skyline marks the level of the old "peneplain" which surrounds the depression of Boston and its suburbs. If one imagines the tops of the hills connected, one may see clearly the line of this old plain. The gaps are valleys worn by rivers and the higher hills are remnants of old hard mountains.
In some age of geology the great area now known as the Boston Basin cracked and slipped below the area of the peneplain, and if one studies the horizon carefully, he may see the rim of that Boston Basin from Lynn around by Arlington to the Blue Hills and the sea.
On this area of sunken land are all the cities of greater Boston; beginning from the east, Lynn, Maiden, Medford, Belmont; then where the Charles curves along the edge of the upland, Waltham, the Newtons, Needham, and Dedham, with Readville, Milton and Quincy to the south. There is a broad rather hilly plain to be seen between the Charles and the Neponset from Watertown through Brookline, Jamaica Plain, Forest Hills, Roslindale to Mattapan and thence to the sea.
The action of the rivers is also interesting. The Mystic lies at our feet, meandering over its tidal flats. Off to the southwest the Charles River breaks through the upland at the rim of the basin and to the south is the valley of the Neponset. All the land upon which now are Cambridge, Somerville and Charlestown (with the exception of the high hills or drumlins) were once brought down from the uplands by the Charles and Mystic Rivers; and East Boston, where the rivers join, owes much of its origin to their combined action, as is also the case with much of Chelsea and Winthrop. All of greater Boston rests on the waste brought down from the rivers, with glacial hills scattered over the flood plains.
But the view is not only one of growing understanding. It is a wonderful dream of color, of every shade of green in spring, of every tone of red and yellow in fall, always with the glint of ocean in the distance.
To the trained eye the brook valleys are easily traceable by the general coloring of the trees which fill them. The characteristic tree of brook and swamp is the red maple, which with its soft red of blossoms in early spring, its brilliant scarlet in early autumn and the silver gray of its twigs in winter, tints all the valleys of the reservation and defines them as on a map.
First cache by Team N.E.R.D.S. !
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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