Written by The Lizard Toads
The Lizard Toads (Potter&Suzer, DHobby1, Cachunuts and Desert Hermit) completed this contest on 31 July 2004, with 92 days to spare!
The following is an account of their adventure.
Fri 6/25/04 5:39 pm Email arrives – Subject: Operation Desert Command; Message; DH: Check this game out. It sounds Awesome. Let’s put a team together! CH: Sounds pretty cool. You wanna drive? When do you want to come by and pick me up?
Fri 6/25/04 9:30 Email sent to The Team – Subject: Adventure Contest in Moab; Message; Just a note to let you know that we are headed out to begin our adventure this weekend! Tried to post a note on the forums tonight but the admin must have been doing some updates….more to come when we return! And the Adventure begins…….With so little time to prepare or do any research we figured we’d just go down, scout out the location and try to at least find the first tag! The professor had been planning on putting out a new cache along the south side of the Colorado River at a spot called “Chicken Corners” while Georgia attended a family reunion in Moab. Turns out that the first tag of this Operation Desert Command is just on the other side of the river and down a ways from the Chicken Corners location. The problem is that the only way to get there is to drive back 25 miles to Moab and then cross the river and drive back 30 miles along the other side of the river to get to the tag.
By the time the Professor got back to Moab from Chicken Corners, Georgia was ready to go with him to search for that first tag. The Professor had done did some last minute calculations before we left so that if we found the first tag we’d have a chance to get to the general area for the second tag….I tell ya what, having a guy like the “professor” on the team makes it seem like we’re cheating! This guy is amazing! We found the yellow GPS tag glued to rock after just one small false bush-wack…..this became position A. From this position, we were to follow a True compass course of 334deg. 18mins. 34.5360secs. Somewhere between 18.876493 and 20.365559 miles along this bearing, we would find our next Tag…..glued to a four foot high wooden post. So we’re off…..
After a rather long-slow go at driving into the area we decided to walk the last .67 mile – prepared if necessary to spread out and search every square inch of ground till we found that wooden post!! Craig actually had two different routes set up, one starting at the north end and the other at the south end. We choose the south route and start out walking down the wash along our route watching the our GPS’r and searching the horizon for a wooden post. After about 20 minutes of walking, off in the distance about 500 feet I see what looks like it could be a post! We start walking faster and faster, adrenilan pumping, the closer we get the more excited we are, it sure looks like a post, but what’s that sticking out the bottom? Maybe it’s a branch, as we get closer we can see it’s a small piece of wood that is wedged in next to the post to help keep it upright! Talk about excitement, we were ecstatic! High 5’s, big hugs, yee haw’s, what a GREAT feeling! If all the positions are this easy, it’ll be a cake walk……Wrong!! So now we’ve got Position *A – B = #3, guess we better read “The Teams” note again:
Your first item to recover is 3 Ziploc bags (two inside one). These are buried and contain a steel bar for locating purposes. To find this location, go to 601832 East and 4285234 North. Unfortunately this Northing number is incorrect. To get the correct Northing number, you’ll have to add the number you determine from subtracting B from A (above (*) to the false Northing we’ve given you (i.e. 4285234)…This will then correct the Northing of the location of the 3 buried Ziploc bags. Ignore the information in the Ziploc bags (not relevant), but take a photo of the bags, and post this photo on vigps.com as proof you have visited this location – then rebury the bags as found….Like I said……it’s a good thing we have the professor on our team! These instructions have me totally confused!
After subtracting B from A we head off went on a very long dusty road in search of the 3 zip lock bags. The roads around here are impossible to follow, one minute you’re on a dirt road, next thing you know the road disapears and you’re left searching the for signs of tire marks on the slick rock. The GPS is reading .38 away so we decide to walk it. Since this position will require the help of a metal detector we get out the trusty metal detector, our camel-backs etc and start our short hike over to where the GPS zeroed out. Turn on the metal detector and NOTHING! The batteries were to weak for it to initialize so back to the truck for the fresh battery pack! We actually found a pretty good road on our walk over so Craig says he’ll go bring the truck back. Soon as he’s back we load up the fresh battery pack, initialize the detector, swipe over the area a couple of times and BINGO, two digs with the garden shovel and within a minute we’ve got the bags! Sweet, it’s our first hidden note…..The note ended up having the same information that was listed on the website at www.vigps.com so even though we gained no ‘new’ information, we still needed to take photo’s of the baggie’s as proof of our being there!
From where you find the buried Ziploc bags, proceed 9.291155 miles at 48deg. 27min. 09.8287 sec. True. You are to locate a buried canister with NO steel bar, buried beside a 4×4 wooden post. There we will receive further instructions – Because we had left Salt Lake in such a hurry, and this was to be just a scouting mission we didn’t have our laptop computer with us. We also didn’t know the exact method used by the team to calculate the waypoints so we just scrolled out on our Magellan Meridian Gold GPS to get a rough idea of the location for the next position. It was getting late in the day and we had a four hour drive to get home but we really wanted to make a clean sweep of these first four items so we decided to give it a shot.
This part of the story written by the Professor. After wandering around a bit on dirt roads coming in from the west we got to within about a third of a mile from the site and decided to hike it! The temperatures were climbing, it had to be near 100º, but we throw on the camel backs, grab a snack and head out. We soon ran into a series of deep parallel cracks in the rock surface that ran perpendicular to our course for as far as the eye could see. We had to scurry back and forth along the cracks to find places filled with enough rock debris so we could scramble across and get up the other side. Then another couple hundred yards away would be another deep crack. This is a bad case of stretch marks in the Earth’s surface that become the rock fins in Arches National Park further south that have eroded into the arches and other unique rock formations. At this point, Georgia found a small tree and decided to hang back in the little scrap of shade while I went on ahead. With a lot of zigging and zagging I arrived at the point I had picked on my gps receiver. I was expecting another new 4 foot 4 x 4 post. I found myself surrounded by old mining equipment and about 8 old 6 x 4 posts cemented in the ground that were broken off just above ground level. I didn’t think those fit the description so I wandered all around looking for a new post. I could only afford a few minutes of searching with the wife alone back in the land of gigantic cracks and the 4 hour drive looming ahead so I high tailed it back. It was a bit of a defeat but we told ourselves not to let this last defeat overshadow the triumph of the three objectives that we found.
The next morning I looked at the aerial photo of the area and could see that there was better access into the area from the east. I still wasn’t sure of the correct method for figuring the exact coordinates using a distance and a direction so I figured it three different ways and came up with three different points. I didn’t think the point using the great circle calculator could be correct because it came out right on the track where I had walked. I felt most confident with the point I came up with using expert gps and clicking points until I got one that showed up the proper distance and direction from the ziploc bags. This point was up above the mining equipment and down in a crack. I thought the team had placed a new post down in one of those long cracks to try to fake us out. So the next Friday after work we drove back down and followed my route along Salt Valley and up a rough but passable old road and parked right by the old hoppers. After a fruitless hour on the rocks overlooking the old mining equipment, we came down and I decided to walk my gps out to the correct distance from the ziplock bags and then walk an arc hoping to find a hidden wooden post. The wife used our other gps and set it to the point derived from the circle calculator and it settled down on one of those broken off 4 x 6 posts. After a couple of scoops with the small garden shovel she pulled out a white pill bottle. We were absolutley ecstatic to have finally found it. We now knew that the circle calculator was the method to use.
As the sun was setting I got out the laptop and figured out that we needed to find a tag on the Moab Rim trail overlooking the town on Moab and we also needed to go back on the Blue Hills road to walk another line looking for a steel post. We decided to go for the Moab Rim trail first thing in the morning before the sun got too hot. We would have to hike this one because there was no way our little stock Tacoma would be able to even start going up that trail!We got up before sunrise to get a headstart on the day ahead of us. Our plan was to hike the Moab Rim trail, grab the tag, then head out on the Blue Hills road in search of the steel post. The sun was just coming up when we arrived at the Rim trail. The temperature was perfect for a nice hike! As we headed up this trail we were in total amazement that a vehicle could make it over some of these rock stairs! And the views! What a way to start a day. The hike was a bitch, but once on top the views in all directions were awesome, words can’t describe how we really felt that spectacular morning. We found the tag without problems, took a lot of pictures and then headed back down, total hiking time around 2 hours. We immediately headed out for the Blue Hills road to search for a steel post. We figured this would take maybe another 2 hours tops…….WRONG!
We found ourselves back in the same general area where we had searched for and found the wooden post last weekend. This time we came better prepared with a powerful set of binoculars provided by one of the other team members. We found a road of sorts that followed alongside the line we needed to search. We could see a series of sign posts but didn’t think they fit the description of the remains of an old steel post.
We went back towards the north end of the search line and could see a rusty looking post off in the distance. We walked out to it and got real excited when we saw evidence of digging around the post. Could it really be this easy? Certainly not! We didn’t know if it was here or not. How big of a bar are we looking for? How deep is it buried? Is it actually under the post so do we need to lift the post out of the ground? We decided to leave this post for now and check another one further north. This one has evidence of digging also and it hasn’t been filled back in. Has Bob Rich been here ahead of us? If so, did he put the bar back the way he found it? So many questions and so many uncertainties and man was it turning out to be a hot day! We expected to be out of the truck for ten minutes but it turned out to be an hour and a half and we were soaked in sweat and hadn’t brought our camel backs with us. We drove back a ways and stopped under the only tree tall enough to provide any shade and ate our lunch. We debated going in to Moab and hanging out during the heat of the day and coming back out in the evening to camp and continue the search. We decided to drive back to the south end for one more look before heading in to town. The only posts we could see were those sign posts we had ignored earlier. They were actually on the other side of a small wash and you would need an atv to drive over there. I decided to put on my complete hermit outfit of long hiking pants and long sleeved hiking shirt complete with my hat with flaps that cover my ears and neck. Donned the camel back and misting unit and headed out down and across the small wash and up the other side. I could see fresh atv tracks going up to the post and thought “Bob Rich has been here!”. Poked down into the sand with the garden shovel and nothing. Poked again on the other side and “Clang!”. Scooped under and pulled out a yellow steel bar with 2 yellow tags on it. Pulled out the radio and said “Honey, You might want to walk over here!” This was a very joyous moment because now we can go on and figure out our next destination. As we were driving out we stopped and had a nice chat with a ranger for the BLM. It’s nice to know that they come out here occasionally to check on us in case we get stranded in this God forsaken place.
We went back to that lone shade tree and calculated that our next destination is up the Lockhart Basin trail. What a coincidence, last week when I placed our “Chicken Corner’s” cache I wanted to try to be the first finder of the “Lonely Lock Heart Bison” cache which was nearby but I didn’t have enough time. (I didn’t know it at the time but I didn’t have enough truck to get there either.)
We stopped in Moab at Denny’s for dinner and double checked our calculations while we ate. The dinner took longer that we had wanted and it started getting dark on us as we drove out and arrived at the start of the Lockhart Basin trail. It was quite difficult to follow the trail even with the route I had made in the gps. We found a nice spot at the base of a guardian monkey and a bunch of other spooky goblin rock shapes. We got up before the sun the next morning and found our way up the road. Man we wish we had those lockers on this little truck. This road got ugly real quick. Every time we were proud of ourselves for getting up some bad spots, we would find some spots even worse. It didn’t take long to decide it was time to park and hike the rest of the way. We remembered reading in the Death Valley adventure story about leaving a note in the windshield in case someone finds the truck way out here so we wrote our note indicating the coordinates we were hiking to and that we left at 7:15 on July 4th and expected to be back by 3:00. That should be way more than enough time. (Yea, right.)
It’s only 1.8 miles as the crow flies….(We found out that it translates to 4.3 miles each way as the human walks.) It was very pleasant and cool walking down in the bottom of the wash and we quickly walked along the switchbacks and climbed up to the ledge that we would follow to the hidden cannister. We came around a corner and walked out onto a point where the view opened up wide and we could just see forever. What a fabulous view to the East, North and West with towering sculpted cliffs to the South. Looking to the western horizon I could see a little notch way off in the distance and I told Georgia, “I hate to say this but I think that notch way over there is our destination.” With the sun now getting up to full strength and no shade in sight along our path it was a daunting task that lay ahead of us. After what seemed to be an eternity, we arrived at our destination. Thankfully the site was on the west side of a high cliff so we were able to sit in a sliver of shade to search for the cannister. We checked the site carefully for footprints or any sign that Bob Rich had been there. We couldn’t tell for sure. While Georgia copied the note and took pictures, I walked the extra 0.3 miles to the Lonely Lock Heart Bison cache and got confirmation that Bob Rich had been there the day before at about the same time of day! After a long and gruelling return trek we were overjoyed to finally arrive back at our trusty life support unit, the little red Tacoma. Surprisingly it was 5 minutes to 3:00. What a great estimate on the time…..what a LONG day!After 2 nights of camping we figured we could treat ourselves to a night in a motel to scrub off the dirt and sleep in a real bed. We spent a lot of time going back and forth in the cool swimming pool and the hot tub. We figured out the location of our next destination to be up Pritchet Canyon. We read in the local books that it used to be that the highest rating for the jeep trails around here was 4 plus.
But the road up Pritchet Canyon has become so bad that it is beyond a 4 plus and they have extended the rating system up to classify it as a 5 and only 10 percent of vehicles can make it up the canyon on their own power. Well, looks like another early morning hike.
This time it is just a short drive away from Moab along the south side of the Colorado river. We parked and paid our 2 dollars to hike across the private property at the bottom of Pritchet canyon. Man, it gets real ugly real quick on this road. There is a series of stair steps going down with steps that are close to 3 feet high! You really need a huge amount of clearance up here and you wouldn’t have a chance of getting back out without front and rear lockers. No problem though for a couple of hikers. This is a much shorter hike today and we arrive at the cache site before the heat sets in. Now for the hard part. The gps is pointing across the wash and up the rocky cliffs on the other side of the canyon. Well, the team said no rock climbing gear is needed so there must be an easy way up there. Georgia waited in some shade while I found a crack to scramble up to get to the indicated location.
Looks like a strange place to glue a tag because there are no large rocks here. There is a small bush and a lot of smaller rocks that look like they would slide downhill in a good rainstorm. The other tags have all been on good solid rock surfaces that are going to be around for a good long time. The sun is really getting hot now so I hurry and widen my search area to no avail. After a couple of hours we decide that we will need to end another trip on defeat and head home. Again we tell ourselves not to let this last defeat overshadow the three great victories that we have achieved.
First thing we do when we get home is to email The Team with our dilemma…..something’s not adding up. Up to this point all of the positions have been “very” close to the coordinates. We email them a photo of the area Craig searched and the coordinates asking if by any chance there has been a mistake! We try to be patient while we wait but the rest of the team is anxiously waiting to make their first trip down. The Team emails us that yes, there is a mistake, they have given us the coordinates in the Nad27 map datum instead of WGS84 and because it’s their fault they give us the tag #…..phew, now we can send the rest of the team down to the next destination rather than having to hike Pritchet again!
Sue takes over the story for awhile here…….
It was the best of times…..It was the worst of times……..#9 -July 8, 2004 Sue, Lynn and Don
<br />We left Moab at 5:00 A.M.! We are driving down to The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. We have rented a Jeep Rubicon for this adventure because we will be driving Elephant Hill. Lynn has always wanted to go on this Jeep trail. A few years ago, we started out, but had to turn back because another driver’s SUV had lost its clutch and was being towed out. (The ranger told us it would cost $1,500 to be towed out.)<br />At 6:20, we saw a beautiful sunrise. I would like to stop to take some pictures ( the sun hitting the cliffs and rocks is stunning), but we really need to get to our destination. It’s already 80 degrees. By 6:50, we were at the entrance to Elephant Hill (and the park wasn’t even open yet).
7:15A.M. the thermometer was registering 98 degrees, and we were only 8.61 miles away from the coordinates but what a 8.61 miles! We have used the lockers 3-4 times. We made a turn and went down SOB Hill. By 9:05, we have found the cannister and done all of the necessary documentation. Now we had to go up SOB Hill-it’s not named that for nothing! At 10:40, we decided to take a short break the thermometer is now registering 107. We were done with Elephant Hill by noon. We only got spanked a few times!We decided to take a short lunch break at a nice campground. There is a large sandstone boulder, which gave us shade and relief from the horrible heat. A man from New Jersey had parked his RV and walked over to talk to us. He told us that he would really like to see the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, and was thinking about driving his RV up Elephant Hill (after all, the map shows that there are only a couple of switchbacks).
The three of us told him that would be impossible, I doubt that he could drive the RV to the trail head! He then decided his need was so great to see the confluence that he decided to hike it. We again told him that it would be nearly impossible. He was persistent, and stated a ranger at the Visitor’s Center told him it could be done. His plan was to hike down from the overlook! He left with two bottles of water and his fanny pack. He said he had done quite a bit of hiking in New Jersey, and that he could easily do this in six hours! We thought we would read about him in the newspaper later. By 12:45, we are finished and on our way to our next adventure! We did have to stop in Moab for gas. We bought 14.9 gallons, and the tank holds 15!
#10-July 8, 2004 Sue, Lynn and Don
It was mid afternoon and we were on our way. This seemed way too easy! Don was driving and we were on a very nice dirt road. There were very few bumps and ruts-something must be terribly wrong. We were on our way to “Hey Joe Mine” The GPS showed we had three miles to go. WHOA! Now I understand-this was not going to be easy. I began to think that I would get out and walk (I don’t have a death wish). Against my better judgment, I decided not to create a scene. The road has narrowed considerably, and has become very rutted. Besides that, there are numerous switchbacks. We had begun our descent into Spring Canyon, it was very steep! I had been advised to keep my eyes closed.
<br />On the way down, Don spotted a Jeep-truck-or-car that went off the cliff. It had gone off the road and plunged onto a ledge approximately 1,000 feet below. We stopped to take a look. The wreckage looked as though it had been there for a while. At about 4:20, Lynn spotted the Green River (and also some mining relics). Now, we will be following the Green River for what seems like a long distance. The thermometer is now registering 114 degrees. This has become ONE HELL OF A ROAD! We actually pass another Jeeper on the trail. We thought he might be some of our competition, so we stopped to talk to him and quiz him. We noticed that he had a GPS with him. Interesting! Hmmm . . . Bob Rich perhaps? Back to the road . . . it has become terrible. The tamarisk was overgrown (someone should come down here and trim this stuff), making it increasingly difficult to continue on, but we do. The road has become almost impassible, but we were able to reach our objective. When we rented the Rubicon, it had approximately 3,000 miles on it, and had just a few light scratches. We’ve managed to turn the shiny finish into a real mess! Some might consider we’ve TRASHED it……but hopefully not the guy we rented from!!
By 5:45 P.M., we have arrived at our objective, and by 6:10 we were gone! We have traveled approximately 48 miles in about five hours! At this rate, it will take forever to finish Operation Desert Command. At 7:00 P.M., it has cooled down to a nice 104! We were back in Moab at 8:35, and I felt wonderful about what we had accomplished, although it was a VERY long day.
Craig had tried to prefigure the most likely spots the day before, by the direction only…..without actually having the number of miles. We were expecting the team to call while we were in route to Moab from Salt Lake. Craig figured it would save some time if he had made the correct assumptions. For some reason he felt sure the tag number would be 1597. We arrived in Moab around 7:30, checked into the motel, found a nearby cache, and waited for our team to get back from “Hey Joe mine”. The team pulls in around 8:30 pm looking totally exhausted from a very long, HOT day! Starving and needing a margarita in a very bad way! They take a quick shower and we head over to the mexican place for some much needed nurishment. Craig has the laptop and we’re ready to plan out the next day. Sue says the tag number at “Hey Joe” was 1610. Looks like our next destination is at the bottom of 10 mile canyon, right where it empties into the green river!#11 – July 9, 2004 Georgia, Craig, Sue, Lynn and Don – The whole team is together today…..time to kick some major butt!!<br />When we left Moab (at 9:30 A.M.), it was a very cool 83 degrees. By 10:50, it is 103! We have turned the Rubicon back in and are driving our own vehicles, an Xterra and Toyota Tacoma. Around 11:00, someone noticed that water is leaking out of the back of the Xterra. A five-gallon container of water had tipped over, and we lost about half of it, humm……I wonder if this is an indication of how this day is going to be! We drove as far down 10 mile wash as we could go in our vehicles to where the BLM has marked a way to get out of the wash to the north. The distance to the destination was 5.3 miles in a straight line but with all the twists and turns down in the wash it was close to 10 miles. (Guess that is why they call it 10 mile wash.) You would need an ATV to go any further down this wash.<br />The map showed a road up on the point north of the wash that got within 2 miles of the destination. We figured we would be able to find a way to scramble down the cliffs to get down to the river. After a bit of wandering to find the right access to get out to the end of the point, we were a bit intimated to see the way the sheer cliffs dropped straight down to the river.
There were a few smaller washes that fed into the main wash and it looked like one of them off in the distance had enough rock debris piled up that it might be possible to descend. The professor donned his full hermit outfit and headed out with the other team members directing from above using binoculars to scout out the best route and relaying the information with the radios. It took a while but eventually the professor made it down to river level. It was like going down three seperate staircases with wide level spots between the different cliff levels. At the river level is where the going got incredibly slow. The tamerisk trees along the river banks were growing so thickly together that they were virtually impenetrable. The only way to get through was to put the right foot at the base of one of the trees and apply full weight to push the tree slightly to the right. Then do the same process with the left foot and then scramble a foot forward while getting scraped all over from the branches. Then repeat the process a few thousand times. It took more than an hour to go less than a quarter of a mile across the sandy river bottom to the actual river. Most places along the river there is a trail going along the river but that is not the case here, the trees have covered the entire sandy bank with no breaks. Okay, let’s try wading up the river.
Whoa, he is sinking up to his knees in the goeyest slimiest mud you’ve ever seen. It almost sucked both of his shoes right off before he could get back out of there. It was still 1.1 miles to the destination as the crow flies which would be more like 1.75 miles following the bends of the river and where the river curved up ahead it has dug into the cliff making a sheer wall going straight down to the water with no sandy ledge to walk on. So between the impenetrable tamarisk trees and the deep river mud it was obvious that it would not be possible to get to the destination by this route. So nothing to do but to take a deep breath and dive back into those trees from hell. Another bad thing about those trees was that they were covered with spider webs and some kind of black soot like substance that was now covering him from head to toe. He was very grateful for his hat with the flaps that kept the spider and soot from getting in his ears and down his neck. The scramble up the 3 cliff sections was a very welcome and easy hike compared to fighting those darn trees. So, now it looks like the best option will be to drive about 80 miles to get to the other side of the river. There is a spot that we can get within a half mile of the destination. Then with a scramble down the cliff to the river and a little swim we should be at our destination.
Early the next morning we headed out for the long drive to the spot on the other side of the river. Here is where the fly got into the ointment. There was no spot along the cliff where it was possible to get down without climbing equipment. Even if we rigged up some kind of makeshift rope to get down the first set of cliffs, all the small side washes came together at the lower cliff and combined into what must be a tremendous waterfall in a cloudburst and it would be a totally impossible descent for our professor to make. We had a great view of the target area and could see lots of ATV tracks down there so now we knew for sure that ATVs could make it all the way down 10 mile wash to the river. We consoled ourselves by finding a geocache on the long drive back to Moab. Time to go with plan “C” which is go back into Moab to rent some ATVs and go for a 10 mile ride down the wash on the other side of the river.
On the way back to Moab we consoled ourselves by stopping off to find a fun cache called The Tube by the Tunnel that had been placed by Potter and Suzer.
Continued in Part 2
