A Geocaching Adventure

I know that I have posted this blog a few too many times this week, but I need to talk about a wonderful experience that I had last week while camping of one of Lake George’s (New York State) beautiful islands.

I love exploring the mountains on the eastside of Lake George and I noticed before we left for the camping trip that there were a few geocaches hidden along a trail system that I wanted to hike. So without interest from my family I headed out solo from a lakeside trailhead located near Red Rock Bay on Lake George.

The trail going up was worn, but in good shape and the RED ROCK BAY VISTA geocache was an easy find. I then set out on the ridge trail that looked like it was hardly used and these are the ones that I like to hike, especially on a cool breezy day that I had.

The next geocache was The Narrows Lookout, which was located off the trail near old forest fire. This was a cool place, and I enjoyed the views.

The next and the last geocache that I found that day was In the Shadow of It's Tail , which is a really fun multi-cache. The first part I made a lot more difficult than I had to. When I was walking down a rock outcrop and the ridge trail again picked up it’s north-south direction I noticed that this cache may have been a little out of the way and it looked like some serious climbing get to it. However, after I descended off the outcrop and walked a bout 0.25 mi. south along the ridge trail, I noticed a trail intersection and it led in the general direction of the cache, so I went after it. Recorded the waypoint of this intersection and before set off. After awhile I noticed that the cache must be to my right up hill and that the trail was taking me away from the cache, so I bushwhacked for about 1000 feet until I hit a rock face. The cache was only 136 feet away from me, but it might as well have been a mile. This rock face ran perpendicular to the first 800-1200 feet of the trail I just walked down, so I headed back toward the trail, along this rock face until I found a spot where deer had gone up the face and even for a chicken like me I was able to scramble up and find the micro. This one will make you laugh, but I will not spoil it. The second and final part was easy, just maintain your elevation. I wanted to practice my compass skills so I took a direction on the trail intersection waypoint and compassed out, almost stepping on a yearling deer in the process. By coming up the rock face, I was able to get behind her with her noticing.
I made it to the intersection and set out to find one more geocache, but when I reached the spot where the first micro was, there was a group of muggles having lunch, so I decided that that one would have to wait.

All and all I had a fabulous 7-mile loop through some beautiful country that offers a wonderful array of habitats and a plethora of photo opportunities. The hike actually was not that difficult either. Fun Fun Fun!