Weston Woods Mystery Cache

Walks on Weston Conservation Land by Elmer E. Jones, outlines many hikes. We chose a trail mentioned in Chapter 10 of this book to place the cache. The book is available at Dragon Books (391 Boston Post Road, Weston, MA 02493, 781 647-0049).

To get to the start of the trail, we recommend taking the very short walk on the roadway since the path is lined with poison ivy! (Once on the trail there is no PI where you will be walking.) From the closest parking area, go up four telephone poles and look for a white pine and a drainage ditch to locate the trailhead. There is also a green arrow on a tree to point the way. There are many routes you can take to vary the length of your trip. If you go to the cache and retrace your steps back to the parking area, your journey will last about 30 minutes. If you are looking for a longer walk you can make a loop by continuing on the path until it exits at Woodbridge Road. From there follow Woodbridge out to Ash Street, turn left and you will soon be back at the parking area. This hike will take a little less than an hour.

Now for a little lesson in Weston Geology. As you walk the trail you will pass through a stone wall. On your left is a pond that lies in a depression. Elmer Jones, the author of Walks on Weston Conservation Lands, believes this to be a kettle hole. It was formed when a buried block of glacial ice melted away and left a depression. About 50 feet further along the trail you will walk on top of an irregular mound known as an esker. An esker is defined as "A long, narrow, steep-sided ridge of coarse sand and gravel deposited by a stream flowing in or under a melting sheet of glacial ice."

When we placed the cache we had some difficulty getting good accuracy. When we returned with our newer GPS it appeared to get far better accuracy. You might want to bring the hint along on your journey just to be sure that you can locate the final. This cache may be able to be found in the snow, but not easily.

To make this cache a little more interesting, we offer a short trivia quiz that will yield the numbers you need for the coordinates. The ones listed above are for the parking area. All answers can be obtained fairly easily by doing a bit of web searching.

A = What is the atomic number of Oxygen?

B = How many wives did England's Henry VIII have?

C = The Old Man in the Mountain can now be viewed from how many vantage points?

D = The __ Towers is a book in the trilogy, Lord of the Rings.

E = What is the name of the title song from the play, "A Chorus Line?"

F = What "number" movie starred Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman?

G = An enneahedron (or enheahedron) is a solid with how many faces?

H = How many dice are used to play Yahtzee?

You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.

This area is open in the winter but the cache will be difficult to find after a heavy snowfall.