The Altona Forest is situated in the City of Pickering just east
of Toronto. The Forest is approximately 53 hectares (102 acres). In
1982, the forest was designated an environmentally significant area
due to its ecological and historical importance. The forest is a
very special place given its placement within an urban center.
The forest provides essential habitat for a large number of
plants and animals which are common and not so common to southern
Ontario. These include many migratory and songbirds, foxes,
coyotes, hawks and rare amphibians. The forest contributes to the
bioregion's greenspace network and is connected to the
environmentally protected Rouge-Duffins Wildlife Corridor on the
north. The forest also replenishes groundwater storage areas, and
reduces the potential for damaging floods downstream. The forest is
owned and managed by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
(TRCA).
The southwestern section of the forest contains the Dr. J.
Murray Speirs Ecological Reserve. This area is not for public use
but is a natural reserve which was donated to the Toronto Regional
Conservation Authority (TRCA) by Dr. J. Murray Speirs, a long time
resident of Pickering, a noted naturalist and environmental teacher
and a recent recipient of the Order of Canada.
More information can be found on the web simply by doing a
google search on "Altona Forest Pickering" and taking a look at the
first few web sites that are returned.
Please note that no bush wacking is required for this cache (and
is discouraged in order to preserve the wilderness aspect of this
area). Using the trails will take you to within 4m of this
cache.
The supplied coordinate is the suggested entry point and parking
area. Another potential entry point and parking area is at N43
49.888 W79 08.184.
In order to determine the true coordinates of the cache, you
must solve the following Sudoku puzzle (puzzle without the letters
can be found at the bottom of the listing):
When you have solved the puzzle, use the numbers that appear in
the Sudoku boxes with the letters in the following way point:
N43 AB.CDE W79 FG.HIJ
Before replacing the numbers in the waypoint, first change the
values as follows:
B=B-3
C=C-2
D=D-6
E=E+3
F=F-6
J=J-1
May 30, 2006: The cache got chipped. Yep, someone came by and
took out a bunch of trees and put them through the chipper. I
assume it was some machine that just grabbed a tree and plopped it
in the chipper since someone should have noticed the cache
container if they did it by hand. All that was left was little itty
bitty pieces of plastic and paper. Good thing there weren't any
TB's in it at the time. See Nozzletime's May 22nd log entry for a
couple pics of the cache remains.
Here is a pic of a few things that I found...
Note the "You have found a geocache. Please replace
it." paper (guess "Chip" doesn't know how to read). Also, there are
a few recognizable puzzle bits and a piece of the lid (the cache
used to be a large Lock 'n Lock container stocked with
puzzles).
June 9th, 2006:The cache has been revived as a micro a few metres
from the original location. The puzzle has been updated to reflect
the new coords. Please bring your own writing instrument.
Good Luck
Waypoint Verification : The product of all the final non-zero
letter values is 4320. The sum of all the final letter values is
27. You can also check your answers for this puzzle on
Geochecker.com.