Yesterday I enjoyed a huge 11 hour day in Henry Coe State Park!

I started Geocaching in late 2005 and credit it for expanding my horizons of the immense network of trails and parks in and around Silicon Valley. There are a small handful of geocachers who do “significant” day trips in the immense Henry Coe SP. It happens that one of them planted a new 32 cache series, and yesterday I went with 2 of the other “extreme Coe” cachers and spent 11 hours slogging up and down hills. (I don’t actually locate as many actual caches as I used to, but I still use it frequently as a research tool and for new ideas. It’s a great way to discover new places and “local knowledge” of places you haven’t been yet.)

We met at the Hunting Hollow trailhead at 6:15AM, leaving one car there, and taking the other up to the Coyote Creek trailhead and were on our way at 6:30AM. We did the long uphill climb to Kelly Lake, arriving at 9:00AM

From there, we started following the little arrow on our GPS and collected the 31 clues to the “final” cache puzzle.

It took us on some trails none of us had been on before, including the White Tank Spring Trail, on the way to the (very dry) Hoover Lake, which was the furthest point from the cars.

From there, we circled back a second time to Kelly Lake, this time to include filtering some “Frog Water” ™ to drink. I had already consumed 3.5 liters and had planned to filter more. We finally achieved our goal of the day, and headed back to the cars after 11 hours. Whew!

We saw nobody else the whole day. No other cars at the entrances either, except for one at Coyote Creek when we returned. The temperature was in the high 80’s and the park was very dry.

FINAL TALLY:
Geocache challenge: check!
One “field repair” of a mountain bike: check!
“Road rash” from a downhill bicycle tumble (not me!): check!

Many thanks to my 2 colleagues, including the “chief navigator and disc brake mechanic”, who ensured our safe return, as well as to “the master of Coe caches and near-death adventures”!

GPS track at EveryTrail (minus the last few miles back to the starting point, as I had run out of “juice”: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=2279873

More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59666465@N00/sets/72157635184134471/