The next steps to Mt. Shasta: Black Butte

Black Butte is a striking volcano that sits right next to Mt. Shasta, and I’ve always wanted to climb it, too… so I did! I was up visiting my parents and the 5-mile RT hike up this steep, rocky, old volcano seemed the perfect thing to do break in my boots more.

Yowza.

The trail is really challenging in its rocky parts, and there’s some boulder scrambling to get to the old lookout, which I’m really nervous about. There were several people at the summit, though, so I had lots of help… and finally got the cache that’s up there!

Black Butte-y

On the way back, my feet starting hurting again… once again real tear-jerking agony… and I knew my boots needed more than breaking in! OW. I went straight to the Fifth Season, where I’d purchased them specifically for the Shasta adventure (I need crampon compatible footwear) to see what, if anything, could be done.

The local boot expert, Jacques, kept them over night to stretch them out. I picked them up the next day, hoping that would do it… or it might require more fussing with to get my feet to tolerate them… and might I be able to do that in time?

I’ll keep you in suspense, but here are my photos from the hike. The views were stellar - all the way to the horizon!














Above: do you see the chipmunk?
Below: I found these at the Shell station in Yreka. They still work!

OK, I won’t keep you in suspense. I took the boots on another test hike of about 5 miles, and they seem to be fine now!

The Road to Phoenix… begins in Palm Springs!

Phoenix?

Oh yes… I’m reprising a crazy day of caching with Cachepal (Bill)! We headed up to Porterville last summer with Team Perks to see how many we could do in a 24-hour period. After 20 hours, we’d found over 250… and ran out! We’re attempting this again on July 5, and Phoenix is the only place nearby where no one on the team has been. Team Perks is not available, so this time we have f0t0m0m (Jim) and foon (Alan).

We headed out to Palm Springs to hone our teamwork and practice in the heat. We had a lot of fun finding easy ones and wonderful placements mostly by the Wheeler Dealers and PS Arrow, ending up with about 70 for the day.

Fossil Fuel They’re putting in a whole new dinosaur park in Cabazon!
Long Gone The cache looked like old wires stuck in a fence post… marvelous.
This is the Ritz? A big Ritz cracker… at a cheap motel!
4 u PS Arrow The cache looked like part of a metal support… very nice.
2 Red Evil hide in a bougainvillea… but I spotted it! Nice container, actually, and not what you’d think.
Socially Acceptable We almost missed this one as it blended in with the gate hardware… awesome!

Here’s the gang:

The Road to Mt. Shasta…. continues with Sawmill Mtn.

My next hike to train for Shasta was past Mt. Pinos and on to Sawmill Mountain. I camped overnight at McGill to acclimate a bit to the elevation so I could walk farther at least little more comfortably. This hike was 8 miles RT, and turned out to be quite a workout. The first leg to Mt. Pinos felt easy, but the next peak involved more elevation loss and gain than I had thought. I really had to descend about 400′, then back up 300′ in a couple of miles. The views up there are just as nice, though.

Sawmill Mountian (sic)

This is the last of the snow!

I noticed this odd plant, which appears to be fungal. The color is really brilliant, though:

I made it! I ran in to one other person today, just in time for him to take my picture.

Summit Log

After bagging this peak, I went on to find a cache further on and back down a hill. This meant my return trip was up, down, up and across! I was SO tired after that… and my feet were really hurting. (sigh) I’ll need to break in the boots more…

So, that last cache was also an Altoids tin in a rock outcropping! I despaired of finding it, but decided to get really determined, and did after some searching. I had forgotten to bring the spoiler photo! At least I was successful… whew!

Sheepish Grouse

16,000 Geocaches!

Last Tuesday, I took a half-day run at 26 caches with f0t0m0m in the great downtown area of Los Angeles. Among other places, our course took us to a large fountain near Griffith Park:
Some More Kool Aid Fountain

an historic bridge in Silverlake:
Shakespeare Bridge

a couple of odd, abandoned staircases:
Mystery Stairs
Mystery Stairs - The Sequel

an odd, abandoned historical marker:
The Genius of Paul Landacre

and the site of the original settlement of Los Angeles:
El Balero
She’s a Grand Ole Lodge…

After finding a classic cache in a branch of the local library:
796.01

and assorted others, our day culminated in my 16,000th find!
City in Transition #04
which was placed by my good friend OLdweeb. It was fun to make a big milestone a rather random urban cache, but this one was across the street from a significant Buddist temple.

(Note: I wanted to get photos of the temple, but my camera battery died. Rats.)

5 years - 16,000 geocaches. wow.

The Road to Mt. Shasta… begins with Mt. Pinos

Last week, I began my training for climbing Mt. Shasta in mid-July. I’ll be ascending that singular mount with local guides, but really want to be physically prepared by hiking and sleeping at higher altitudes as much possible between now and then.

My first step was to summit Mt. Pinos, which is almost a drive-up, but still requires about a 3 mile RT walk up a road from the parking lot. The peak is at 8831 feet, and coming from sea level, that’s enough to make the walking rather strenuous, even with only a gentle 500 foot elevation gain!

I know I have my work cut out for me to prepare for Shasta!

Here are the caches for the day:
Once A Pond, Almost A Pond
Pinon Pines Pit Stop
Pine Mountain Wildlife
Per Ardua Ad Astra
Space Mountain
Mt. Pinos Cave Dweller
Mt. Pinos - 8831 ft
Peace Valley - B44
Peace Valley - 297
Peace Valley - 107
Peace Valley - Panorama
Peace Valley - 108
Peace Valley - Benchmark

Here are the photos for the day:

Above is the summit benchmark. These are a couple of the wonderful vistas from up there:

Here’s a sign about the trail ahead, but not taken today:

On the way back, I managed to get a photo of a local:

I continued my adventure here this week, so more on this area in an upcoming post!