Welcome to the Winton Lake geo-art. This page contains all the general info you need for this series of caches and Winton Woods Park. As a reminder please follow all park rules.
Some links for the park itself
https://www.greatparks.org/parks/alerts-and-closures
https://www.greatparks.org/alerts/winton-woods-harbor
The harbor office phone # 513-931-1849
Winton Woods Lake:
The lake is a flood control lake – which means the water level can vary greatly during the year. When the caches were placed (8/25-25/2019) I would say the lake was at “summer pool”. This is the water level they maintain during the warmer months for recreation. In the winter they may draw down the lake to make capacity for capturing spring rains. And in the spring the water levels may be much, much higher. This possibly of higher water brings 2 things to mind:
- The caches might be under water and unavailable
- Screw the tops on the containers tight, because the cache containers will be under water at some point!
Unfortunately, like a lot of lakes there’s no water gauge on the lake. About all you can do is call the number above and ask about the water height. There’s a picture on the harbor page above and that’s the height of the water when the caches were hidden. I’ve added a couple of my own pictures of the harbor wall and water level. I’ve hidden just about all the caches about 2 feet above the water, so if the water is just about and the harbor concrete level – you are OK. If the water is any lower than the pictures then expect to have to exit the watercraft to make the grab.
The hides:
All the hides are false bottom centrifuge tubes. Virtually all of them are attached to live tree/shrub branches/trunks over hanging the lake shore attached with a black tie wrap. (See attached picture). I was able to place them all without having to exit my 1 man kayak. I’m 5’10” – so if you are shorter you might need to stretch a bit. These tubes do tend to require a pair of tweezers or a hemostat to extract the log.
The paddle:
Since the caches are along the shore often the water is pretty shallow as you approach. A canoe or kayak should be fine. In the warmer months you can rent a boat at the boat house. (I’ve heard one case where the harbor rental was open but they wouldn’t rent someone because they thought it was too cold out! So call ahead.) They also rent motor (john and pontoon) boats. I would not recommend this based on my personal experience. The lake is very shallow in areas, many times my paddle would be touching the bottom. You would have to exit the boat for every hide and some hides you might not get within a 0.1 of a mile of the cache and most of the lake bottom is mud. On the far west end the creek gets pretty shallow and during lower water levels you may need to portage and drag the kayak along a bit. I’ve also added boat launch and parking waypoints to this cache page.
Hint Nomenclature:
PMD=Pull me down The cache might be a little beyond your reach, but the limb is thin enough to be pulled down by a reachable end
SYC= sycamore tree
Often I can't Identify tree so I just describe them best I can. (If you are a tree person - let me know about any cache and I'll update my hints.
The Puzzles:
They should be pretty easy. There will be a puzzle clue near the bottom of each page. Enter the answer to the question or clue into the geochecker at the bottom of the page. If you are right - the final coordinates will appear! Note the answers to the clues are mostly words, letters, but they can be numbers or coordinates too.
Homage:
Each cache title has a dedication to a paddle cacher I know or who has many paddle caches placed or found.
NOW FOR THE PUZZLE FOR THIS CACHE
Clue: I see bones.
Check your text answer below. Enter it as one word, no spaces.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.