My brand new GPS arrived earlier than expected, so I was really excited to have it for today. I wanted to make my first cache a big one. Randy and I have wanted to conquer Double Peak, the oldest geocache in San Diego County. It’s also the second highest peak in San Marcos. It rained yesterday, and the forecast called for rain today as well. That didn’t matter becasue he couldn’t clear his day on such short notice. I really wanted to use the GPS and I had no transportation, so I searched for the closest cache to where I live that looked like I could reach on foot. I really had no idea what to expect.

Even though it rained yesterday the ground wasn’t very muddy. The trails I was on were pretty sandy, so it didn’t make much of a difference. It was a pretty steep climb, but not too bad. It was steeper than I expected though, and this trail is a lot less casual than most of the other trails in San Elijo Hills. There were about 3 or 4 switchbacks. After the first one I was wondering how many there might be. The cache was about 130 feet off of the trail up the hill. I wasn’t quite sure if I should look for another switchback or not, but I found an area that looked like others might have pushed down the bushes before. It looked pretty difficult from the trail looking up, but the climb wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

The cache was hidden under a bush and I found it almost immediately. The GPS was very accurate and lead me right to the cache.

I really wanted to do some more, but I couldn’t find any more that were within walking distance. Distances can be very deceiving, and if you try approaching a cache from the wrong direction you may find the terrain completely impassable. I walked for about a mile toward where I thought a cache might be hidden according to the coordinates for it, but reached a ravine that was fenced off when I was still a half a mile away from it. It turns out that one was over a hill and really needs to be approached from the other side of the hill.

I can hardly wait for the next opportunity I get to go find some more caches. Randy and I are planning on tackling Double Peak next Saturday.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 18th, 2006 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Geocaching, Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.