I woke the girls up at 5:30 AM with plans for a nice hike to a cache named Panorama that is supposed to offer a grand view of the Monroe area. On a clear day you can see Seattle.
After fueling up at Denny’s, we headed out of town on 203 heading towards Duvall. I punched the cache coordinates into my Garmin Nuvi and figured that should take us to the logging road I remember reading about on the cache description. Sure enough, about 7:00 AM we pulled up in front of a closed DNR gate, with only about enough room for one car to park nearby, which I also remembered from the cache description.
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 Elise and Lauren are ready for the hunt! |
Elise checks the bearing to the cache.
As we started, the cache was about half a mile southeast of us. The path quickly diverged in the wood, and we took the road less traveled by – but it only led to a dead-end strewn with rough boulders and animal bones.
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We continued on through the chilly mist. The girls had great attitudes and were clearly enjoying being back in the woods.
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As the road ahead switch-backed towards the cache, the GPS said we were about 1 mile away. So far so good.
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We stopped for a quick break once we rounded the corner and were headed uphill towards the cache coordinates. The sunrise was bathing the trees with golden light as we prepared to start closing in.
But for some reason, the path ahead quickly appeared to turn back away from the cache.
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| Hmmm, something’s not right here. |
Assuming the “real” switch-back must be still to come, we pressed on. Soon the girls were fearlessly crossing a small stream via a log.
They made it look so easy. When it was my turn, I almost slipped right off. The log was covered in slick frost!
After walking awhile longer, and with the cache location showing as 1.25 miles from us, the path showed no sign of heading back in the direction I expected. I called Kim on my cell phone and had her read me the cache description. It just didn’t sound right. It mentioned several gates we should have seen when we started out on the DNR road, and I didn’t remember seeing any. By this time it was 9:00 AM, and the girls were late for school and I was late for work. So we reluctantly headed back the way we came.
On the walk back, we saw mixed deer tracks and very large cat tracks in some mud. The girls enjoyed speculating what might have happened in that encounter. Back at the car, I got out my laptop and looked up the cache info using the ever-handy GSAK program, which has all the nearby caches loaded into it. I punched in the coordinates listed for the gate and immediately realized that whatever gate we had found, it was definitively not the gate we were supposed to start at.
After driving a couple miles to the correct gate, we forlornly decided we didn’t have time for a second go at Panorama today. We did manage to find three caches along our route on the way home, which was a lot of fun. Lauren found two of the caches and I found the third in Monroe.
Lauren zeroes in on Briar Patch.
Here’s what went wrong. Note the location where we should have parked (“correct gate”) versus where we did park (click for larger view).
Cartographic notes: Panorama (the cache) is the green icon in the center. The blue line shows the track we took. The straight lines coming in from the upper-right corner and cutting back to the parking spot are because I had the GPS off for those portions of the trip.
As you can see, we were totally on the wrong track! Good thing I didn’t try to “bushwhack” our way to the cache. But I learned my lesson and will pay careful attention to the cache description next time. On the other hand, we had a great time exploring a trail through the woods that otherwise I’m sure we probably never would have discovered. We’ll definitely be back for another shot at Panorama!