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If you sit right back to hear my
tale, you'll miss out on an eventful trip. For a roughly three hour
tour, you can leave Delta, find this cache, perhaps another or two,
and return. Ok, so maybe it's a five hour tour to get more caches
than this one, but if not for the courage of your fearless crew,
this cache will remain a lone castaway on the Uncharted Desert
Isle.
This cache is located on a rocky
limestone hill that was once an island in a shallow lake that
remained in Tule Valley after ancient Lake Bonneville receded.
Today it is still an island, surrounded by a mud playa, known
locally as the Tule Valley Hardpan.
The island is usually accessible
year round, except for occasional times when standing water makes
the playa too muddy to cross. You can prevent getting stuck by
avoiding areas with visible water or where the playa surface is a
dark color. Wind often pushes small pools of water around on the
playa, so watch for those areas and avoid them.
You can drive across the playa in
nearly any vehicle, as long as you pay close attention to
potentially muddy areas and avoid them. An ATV is an excellent
choice for this area.
If you prefer to hike across to
the island, it is just over 1/2 mile from the Tule Valley Road and
a bit closer from a rougher road on the west side of the valley. In
either case, you may have to skirt around the catch-ponds dug into
the playa, which often contain water, especially in winter and
spring months.
In the past, it was possible to
observe small rocks from the island, which had been moved some
distance across the playa by prevailing winds. These rocks left
slight trails in the mud to show their paths. However, activity on
the playa in recent years has disrupted this phenomenon and all the
rocks we observed while placing this cache had been deliberately
placed there.
This playa is one of the areas
where an old homesteader, Jack Watson, valiently tried to obtain
water for his cattle herd in the early 1900s. He personally dug
several small reservoirs into the mud surface to catch the scarce
water. The Civilian Conservation Corps later dug the larger
reservoirs and catchment trenches seen today. At the south end of
the playa is the Ibex well, where Jack met with an ironic, life
altering event. You can learn more about Jack and this event by
visiting our Ibex
cache (GCGQYH), which is located on the other side of the Barn
Hills, west of the playa.
We hope you will enjoy the solitude, the views, the history and
the experience of a very unique part of the western Utah
desert.
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