Saturday, January 19: The Geocache has been found!
Congratulations to Leslie Clark and her children.
Snowshoe Geocache Scavenger Hunt! Your first clue to the area
is the picture below! Hints are also posted early at the
Grand Lake Art Gallery and the Mountain Lake Properties office.
Be the first to find the snowman shown above and bring
him to the Mountain Lake Properties office and you will win a
$50 gift certificate. You do not have to have a GPS device to win.
Adam came before Eve. Eve found the tree.
A river snaked around the tree.
If the visual hints do not lead to a direct find on January 19,
then we will start giving out more specific GPS coordinates.
The starting point from where you put on your shoes is
North 40 degrees 14.371 minutes
West 105 degrees 48.011 minutes
Snow Sprites long ago covered the original tracks to the snowman.
New tracks could be from people who are lost, but still having a good time!
Update for January 1, 2008: the tabby kitty in the tree was not recovered.
We have not been up to the location to check on it. The location can be
reached by snowmobile in the winter, although the snow can be very deep
in this location and it is remote. Get an early start and let us know if
you find the kitty or think it is lost.
Update for Monday, September 20: the white kitty has been found
and brought back to our office in Grand Lake. As far as we know,
the tabby is still its tree. Hint: side facing north.
September 20, 2007: GeoCats !!!
A tabby cat went up to check on the white kitty,
and found it a little west of the log cabin remains,
right where she was set a month ago. The tabby
continued further west through forest and meadows
and soon was in the same meadow and by the same tree
that was featured last winter for a snowmobiling geocache!
We have added Tabby in a Tree for you to find.
If you or your family find one or both cats and haven't won the
restaurant prize before, bring just one cat down from its alpine
setting to the Mountain Lake Properties office to collect your prize.
Once you get to the trailhead at 11,200', finding the cats is pretty easy.
The trail is short and almost perfect for a family outing. Getting to the
trailhead, however, can be difficult. In addition to hunters and logging
trucks, you'll find the upper reaches of the road to be very rocky and
rutted. It is reachable only with special vehicles in first gear, or by foot,
(an extra 6/10th mile from where you can park a regular car, 9/10th
if you park by the North Inlet Stream). It can be a nice walk by foot.
Wear bright orange, beware of hunters and make a joyful noise.
Print out the maps and photos and it will be easy. To make it almost too easy,
this time, we are going to give you the GPS coordinates right up front.
GPS: White Kitty is at North 40º 18.724' West 105º 55.211' ± 11,200 feet.
GPS: Tabby is at North 40º 18.851' West 105º 55.465' ± 11,100 feet.
Here is the tabby near the "trailhead" at 11,200'. Below, she is by a great tree.
Here Tabby has found the white kitty. Below is Tabby at a meadow
a short ways down and to the west.
Tabby crosses two high meadows in quick succession and reaches the one shown below.
These meadows are almost dry in the fall. If you visit in the summer when
the wildflowers are at their peak, wear special shoes to keep your feet dry.
Close up of Tabby by the same tree where our
moose-on-the-loose geo-moose ended up last winter. The tabby is set
high on the tree so that if it is not recovered soon, it can still be found
in the winter. If snow covers the white kitty before it is found, please
leave it there and do not dig through the snow for it. Changing the snowcover
can damage plants and it's not worth taking the chance of getting cold and wet
looking for it, so far away from the comforts of home.
This is looking to the north towards the Never Summer Mountains.
Scroll down for a late summer (fall at this altitude) view to the south.
Click on the photo above or here to take a short hike up Blue Ridge directly to
the west. Once you have come this far, it's worth going a little higher.
Click here for maps of this area and for more directions.
With care one can get an ATV fairly close to the lost cats. It is beautiful alpine
country in the upper reaches of the North SUPPLY Trail west of Grand Lake.
The white kitty is close to the remains of a cabin (shown below) at 11,150 feet
with the following coordinates: North 40º 18.738' West 105º 55.113'.
Print these pages and take them with you.
As usual, we ask for previous winners to leave the restaurant prize
at each site for the first newcomer to retrieve it. Everyone is invited
to leave messages or tokens at the sites.
Hopefully, there are enough visual clues here that even if you don't
have a GPS, you have a reasonable chance of being the first to find
a geocat. Click here for maps! Use your refresh button to check for updates,
or clear your temporary web cache to make sure you see all of the
many changes at www.MountainLake.com
Click here for more photos of the white kitty's setting.
To win dinner-for-two at a fine restaurant,
bring one of the cats to our office, Mountain Lake Properties,
at 1133 Grand Avenue (east end of the boardwalk),
across from Pancho & Lefty's restaurant.
Each photo and map has hints to help you to find a cat.
Bookmark this page to check for new geocache challenges!
Here are some basic rules: We will not be burying items;
we will not set them on snow. We do not want you getting
cold digging through six feet of snow. We do not want you disturbing
our natural areas. We will avoid hazardous or wet locations. If a cache
is not found in a timely manner, we will check on it to make sure it has
not been moved by animals. We also will post additional clues to help
you find it. Geocaches will not be on private property; you will not have
to cross private or restricted property to reach one. You can only win once,
but each trip is worth the journey.
Leave the "Geocache Found" note at its location
along with any comments you wish to add.
(The mapping detail on the etrex is not relevant for this cache.)
Grand Lake is about 8400' high (2570 meters).
Latitude = 40.2° North; Longitude = 105.8º West.
Click here for our Weather page.
Click here for live views of our weather-maker Arapaho Peak!
