IDAHO BACK COUNTRY GEOCACHING

 

After picking up a few caches in the Mt. Idaho area I decided I'd like to try to get the back country caches farther south and east of Slate Creek. Most of my geocaching is done by motorcycle (motocaching) but on pavement as I am far from an accomplished off-pavement rider. Nevertheless, with the help of my son, Clint, and friend, Jim, both of whom are accomplished off-pavement riders I was eager to give it a try. I left the farm 50 miles north of Grangeville at 7:00 am and Clint left Lewiston even earlier trucking his bike to Grangeville to meet Jim, a retired Forest Service employee who knows that back country very well.

"Slate Point Lookout" was our first cache in the area. Although it was a very challenging ride for me somehow I made it up without falling and learned a bit in the process. Beautiful scenery although somewhat limited by smoke today. This one was well done and we had no trouble finding it. 

"Ruins of the Nut Basin Forest Fire Lookout" was next on our list.  This one was a real disappointment. The three of us searched for a half hour with no success. Based on previous logs I'm pretty certain we were looking where it should have been. However, it was a beautiful location.

Slate Point Lookout

The one we didn't find

We next traveled to the Florence cemetery which is about all that is left of the wild west mining town.  The cache is called "Florence, Oh What A Gal" and is located at the cemetery.  I had heard of Florence over the years but never made it up there. Very interesting history and the cemetery had just been restored with nice wooden markers.

Jim takes in the view at Nut Basin LO

Clint and I look over the cemetery

Our helpers on the grandpa-jack cache

The "Centennial ATV Trail" was our next one. There is no way I would have found this one without Jim's help. We traveled several obscure roads not even on my GPS.  I located the cache with no problem although it was under a fir, not a pine tree as the description read.

Now we traveled much farther east over to the Gospel Hump area looking for the "grandpa-jack" cache.  We looked and looked for this one with no luck. There was a father and two sons camped there on an archery elk hunt and they helped as well. Finally we gave up and proceed up to our next cache. On the way back the boys flagged us down and had located the cache on the other side of the road from where the coordinates stated. Not only that, but the hint was totally wrong. The cache is now located in an old stump just off the side of the road and I posted the new coordinates.

Clint and I at the Upper Gospel Overlook

Our last one for the day was the "Upper Gospel Lake Overlook".  It was quite a ride to get to this one and a fantastic view to boot. It was a nice placement with accurate coordinates. After finding the cache we traveled farther up the road to get some water from a spring that Jim knew about. 

It was after 7:00 pm by the time I got back to the farm having ridden 185 miles, more than 50 on rough gravel and dirt roads.  M/W