2011 10-1 Shaw Butte Geocaching

Length: 6.7 miles

Duration: 4 Hours 23 minutes

Vertical Up: 1772 feet

My track log at EveryTrail








Today's hike was the next hike in the continuing SSoP Geocaching event series.  We are taking 6 weeks to hike seven summits in the Phoenix area.  Since I am doing the "offical" Seven Summits of Phoenix hike next month, I am doing this series as a "warm-up" to the November event.
I arrived 1/2 hour early and made my way over from the Visitor's Center.  Along the way I found my first Geocache of the day (Marshmallow Rock).  After signing the log in crayon, I made my way over to the meet up location.  

After 20 minutes or so the group was all there and we began up the hill.  The hike on Shaw Butte starts off steep.  Since I was in Austin this week, I did not get a chance to work out much.  As we started up this hike, I really started to feel my week of relaxation.  After about 1/3 mile of hiking we reached the turn off to find our next cache.



After a stop at another cache, we  made our way to the summit of Shaw Butte.  We were barely over an hour into the hike and we had already reached the top.

Up at the top, some of the more experienced cachers headed over the side of the cliff and down to a special cache that you can log only if you find a cache a day for 300 days.  Since I have no chance of doing that (and since it was an extremely steep cliff), I decided to watch.

After some more rest, we began the journey across the top and onto my main goal of the day, a mystery cache called Road Runner's Revenge: Professor Fermi.  This was a puzzle cache where I had to solve a puzzle before the hike.  This was also a milestone for me as it was my 200th cache!

After a few more caches at the top, we started down.  On the way down, we stopped at the remains of Cloud Nine Restaurant.

After another rest and a few more caches, we made it the rest of the way down.  Then up again to my favorite climb of the day, a small peak out of the way with a beautiful view of the Phoenix Preserve.

View of the Phoenix Preserve from the top of a small peak.

This was another great hike and I look forward to South Mountain next week!