Amboy Crater Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Located at the Amboy Crater, a cinder-cone created by a volcanic eruption about 10,000 years ago. Park in the parking area and hike about 1 a mile on a marked trail that takes you through the lava field from this volcano. Trail varies and is steep for the last 200 feet as you walk right up into the crater of the volcano. The cache is a ammo box.
Amboy Crater and Lava Field is an extinct North American cinder cone. It lies within a 70 square kilometer lava field in California's Mojave Desert 2.5 miles (4 km) west of the town of Amboy on historic U.S. Highway 66.
The crater's location is midway between Barstow and Needles and is about 75 miles (120 km) from either of these small cities. Amboy Crater is accessible to tourists via Interstate 40 as well as National Trails Highway - Route 66.
This cinder cone type crater is estimated to be around 10,000 years old and was formed in layers of mostly vesicular pahoehoe - possibly in the Holocene geological period. Lava flows as old as Amboy Crater itself blanket the immediate area. The the crater is 944 feet (288 m) above sea level, about 250 feet (76 m) above the surrounding lava fields, and there is a false trail which is not advised for use in reaching the volcano's rim. The Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommends using the west trail found at the day use parking area. This unmarked, steep, and rocky hiking trail leads to the top of the cone which made Amboy Crater a popular Route 66 tourist stop before the opening of I-40 in the mid 1960s. Other than a stretch of US 66 through New Mexico, Amboy Crater was the only extinct volcanic area along the entire route and generations of Route 66 travelers from the 1920s through the 1960s could honestly boast that they had climbed a real volcano.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Evtug bss genvy nf lbh ragre gur zbhgu.
Treasures
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