Duration: 4 Hours 31 minutes
Vertical Up: 1319 feet
Today’s hike was in the McDowell Mountain Regional
Park. The 21,099-acre has over 50 miles of hiking/mountain biking trails and spectacular views of four peaks,
Fountain Hills and the Superstition Mountains.
This hike was my first “powertrail” geocache event. A powertrail is a series of caches are laid
out along a roadway or hiking trail in order to log as many finds in as short a
distance as possible.
The folks at the McDowell Mountain preserve have been gracious enough to allow a group of geocachers to set up a few powertrail loops around the park. Roughly 10 geocachers chose today to get together to do some serious caching. Today’s plan was to do the big loop and get as many caches as possible.
The folks at the McDowell Mountain preserve have been gracious enough to allow a group of geocachers to set up a few powertrail loops around the park. Roughly 10 geocachers chose today to get together to do some serious caching. Today’s plan was to do the big loop and get as many caches as possible.
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The hike stared off in the Visitor’s center. As I mentioned above, the employees here are
extremely cacher friendly. The first
cache of the day was a mystery cache. It
involved finding answers to three questions in the VC and presenting them to
the cashier. Once we did that, she
brought out the cache. Cool way to start
the day.
A quick drive to the trailhead and we were off on the
hike. This particular powertrail had
about 10 caches per mile - one approximately every 500 feet. They were “easily hidden” 35 mm film
canister. We decided on a team name and
started out.
The hike itself was mellow.
It was basically flat (a slight 400 foot elevation gain) and well
maintained trail all the way. The group
quickly got into a rhythm of leap frogging caches. About a ¼ of the way into the hike we spotted
4 deer about 500 feet off the trail.
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It was a joy to hike with so many people swapping stories
about caches, hikes, hides and people.
In what seemed like no time at all we were at the back of the park,
stopping for lunch at a bench overlook.
As the hike drew on it did become a bit monotonous and (dare
I say warm). If I’ve learned on thing
hiking in Arizona it is how to dress in layers.
A few more miles of hiking and we called it quits at the main road.
What a great way to start the New Year! All total, we found 71 caches!
