cane creek mtns cache-o

What: an orienteering course with 26 geocaches for controls.

Where: Cane Creek Mountains Natural Area (CCMNA), Snow Camp, NC.

Who: open to anyone. Report shared below.

Why: reconnect with and refine your intrinsic geo-senses! This is one of three courses set up to practice and prepare for BHC unplugged part 2. See also CNF and Horton Grove.

When: Go when you please. CCMNA is open every day of the year except for Christmas Day from 8 am to at least 6 pm, 9 pm in summer. Expect a full day to clear the course. 

How: ditch the device, use printed maps. CCMNA EAST and CCMNA WEST are both legal (8.5x14) portraits at 1:7500 with a 100m UTM grid. The west map has been updated since the park's phase 3 opening. Try your local public library for cheap color printing.

You will also want to print this PDF (8.5x11), which gives UTM coordinates, descriptions and hints for the geocaches. It also gives the dates "last found" current to when this list was compiled. You may want to follow the hyperlinks to check recent status. You can now free yourself from the screen and begin plotting locations of the caches by hand on these maps. Next, venture out by foot to find them! 

Be respectful, travel without a trace and re-hide caches. Notify cache owners of any issues. Please consider posting your results/experience in a comment below.  

Cane Creek Mtns Cache-O summary: 23 of 26 caches found in approximately 16 miles and 9 hours (two separate trips).

1/2: first trip to CCMNA for the cache-o and to update the west map. My two sons (ages 5 and 9) joined me. We found 6 caches over the course of 6 miles and 4 hours of hiking. We didn't use GPS assist and quickly found each cache. The print maps work well.

2/7: second trip to attempt to finish up the cache-o, solo this time. The park was opening back up after two back-to-back weekends of winter storms. The trails were icy and I could've used some micro spikes, especially heading up and down from the summit.

There was a high wind advisory and the gusts almost blew me off the lookout tower. The visibility was amazing. I spotted Hanging Rock on the horizon 55 miles away at a bearing of 303.8 degrees. It made up for a frustrating 10 miles in 5 hours with 17 of 20 caches found.

Perhaps I should say 21. Given my luck with Vincenty's Formulae last weekend, I made an impromptu and unsuccessful excursion to hunt down Beeline. Lingering snow with some poor plotting and attacks slowed me down. I guess the latter two are par for any cache-o! 

This snow also made previously unseen features really pop out in the forest. While floundering to find some caches, I couldn't help but think that my time would've been better spent updating the map. Maybe I should always combine mapping with caching at CCMNA.