San Diego – GeoCalifornia

Mystery at the Museum: Twin Peaks

My career as a gumshoe detective was fun but short-lived, as the Mystery at the Museum promotion ended last week after a month. After a bumpy start, things went smoother and I was able to find all of the clues. Collecting all of the virtual jewels was a bit harder. I mean, they were scattered all over the place! I was finding them in Ramona, Coronado, and Poway! The virtual detective assigned to me was getting pretty impatient, and so for my final assignment, she sent me up to both summits of Twin Peaks in Poway to finish collecting the missing jewels. “I don’t wanna go up there,” I whined. “Can’t I do some park-and-grabs?” She doesn’t speak much, but her virtual face suggested there was going to be a not-so-virtual problem if I didn’t load up a backpack and get moving.

I’ve been up Twin Peaks once before, about 9 years ago, and so the first part of the trail was quick since I already found many of the lower caches. My first stop was ‘Another Star in Poway’ by T.R. Violin (GCPDYD). Hidden in 2005, the cache was in amazingly good shape and a quick find. This cache also marked the position of the trail up to the summit, and after this point the road was winding and steeper. I met an older gentleman coming down the trail and he warned me that the back side of the trail was much steeper than the front face. I had a cache to grab a few hundred feet down the back side and getting down there was almost as treacherous as climbing back up. It was worth it though because the cache I found (‘Snakes Alive!’ by Habu (GC2PQHX)) had only been found once in the last two years.

View of Black Mountain and the Pacific Ocean from the west summit

Trail the summit looking east with Mt Woodson in the background

The final cache of the day was actually a repeat. The cache was named ‘Merry Christmas 2009 – Twin Peaks’ (GC226A1) and I had originally found the cache back in January of 2011 with my two oldest daughters. I remember that cache well because we had just moved to California, and I had just started caching so it represented one of very first geocaching adventures. I also remember being a little skittish about the exposure required to get to GZ, but it seemed so trivial this time. Goes to show you what a decade of SoCal hiking experience will do. I’m still skittish about heights, but at least it is a little less embarrassing now. It was cool to find the original logbook and our nearly nine year old entry. It looked like my daughter actually wrote the log, which was cool. I hung out in this quiet little spot for awhile, enjoying the shade and the view. It also seemed like a good place to hang out from the law because after completing the search for the jewels, the virtual detective told me I had to find 35 MORE caches to successfully return them to the safe. Wait, what? Return the jewels? Nobody said nuttin’ ‘bout returning the ice, see. I’s gots ‘em now and dat gumshoe’s gonna have ta catch me if she wants ta send me ta da Big House…

View from the west summit. Logbook with our 2011 entry…

Mystery at the Museum: Beeler Canyon

I am still working on the new promotion at Geocaching.com called Mystery at the Museum (MatM), a month long game-within-the-game in which geocachers can earn several cool, new badges. For details, click (here). For the details of finding my first clue, click here.

After my less than spectacular search at the 4:10 cache, I was determined to prove to the virtual detective that I was up for this case. Combing through the case files that she gave me and making good use of the filters on the geocaching.com website, I surmised that Beeler Canyon might be a good spot to initiate my search for clues. Beeler Canyon is kind of an odd place, sandwiched between the Stonebridge neighborhood in Scripps Ranch and the back side of the technology park near Costco. The beginning of the road has some nice homes, then there is more of a farm-like area, and then it opens up into an empty canyon. The Vulcan Materials company owns some of the land, and the area also serves as an escape route for Stonebridge, with fire roads dropping steeply down to the canyon. Towards the end of Beeler Canyon road are some nice trailheads into Sycamore Canyon.

Two of the three caches here that had clues were your garden variety park-n-grabs, but one (Beeler Road Rock Ruins, GC5YPPF) was located in a remarkable place. GZ was about 100 feet off the road, in a copse of trees within a fenced enclosure with only three sides. There was ample evidence of nefarious activity in the area, including broken beer bottles, drug paraphernalia, and some old clothes. I approached the trees carefully, listening for teens and watching for rattlers, and then the doorway came into view. The place was well hidden by the thick, dead brush and the overgrown trees. The doorway reminded me of an elven home out of Lord of the Rings. In fact, the whole building, or at least what’s left of it, was very otherworldly. The walls were imbedded with large stones and beer bottles, all of which seemed to have been put there on purpose. There was the usual smattering of graffiti, but some of the rocks were actually painted quite nicely. After a bit of exploring, I failed to find the stolen jewels, dead bodies, or any angsty teens. I did manage to find the cache pretty quickly and given the virtually infinite number of potential hiding spots at this site, I’m hoping for a virtual brownie point from the virtual detective. Anyhow, between the three Beeler Canyon caches, I collected one fingerprint and TWO shadows! Dun dun daaa! So I just need one more fingerprint and two footprints to move onto the next level. So I made good progress towards solving the MatM case and had a cool little adventure.

A blend of art and graffiti on the stone walls

Cowles Flowers

After finding some flowers in Escondido, I found some more closer to home! I needed to do some maintenance on one of the caches in the 101 Dalmatians series (Jewel: GC1H0N0). As an aside, this is a series of caches where each one is named after a Dalmatian from the eponymous movie. Each cache has a clue which will help to solve the final cache in the series (Rolly: GC1GZ6Y). (As an aside to the aside, Rolly has only been found three times in the past five years (and not since June of 2017). So if you are a fan of difficult geocaching challenges and/or lonely caches, this one is a good candidate.) I adopted Jewel a few years ago and this pup seems to wander off quite often. Such a bad dog! GZ is just off the major trail on the back side of Cowles Mountain, so there is a ton of traffic past the cache. As a result, I am out here every so often to replace it.

Is this Sumac? No, it’s a superbloom! The Little Bell TB (right) was dropped in the cache

I parked on Barker Way (I’m not making that up!) and took the service road up to where Jewel was hidden. The geopile looked like the remains of a ransacked Egyptian tomb! Rocks turned over and scattered about, a few bits of plastic here and there, but the mummy – I mean, the puppy was long gone. I replaced the cache, but since I had already hoofed halfway up the mountain, I figured I may as well grab a few other caches that I hadn’t found yet. I came back down the service road to the Big Rock Trail, a (well signed) spur trail that is located near a bend with a fantastic view. Big Rock Trail drops fairly steeply to Pyles Peak trail. (Note: This trail is not on ‘official’ maps, so use at your discretion.) The service road had a number of hikers on it (it can pretty crowded) but Pyles Peak trail was very quiet, very narrow and just wonderful! It winds up and down, crosses a seasonal creek, and there are even a few spots that offer shade. The first cache along the way was an ammo can called ‘Is this Sumac? #13’ (GC2RJJQ). It took me a little while to spot the cache because… flowers! I’m not sure why this little spot was ablaze with yellow, purple, and white, but I spent a fair bit of time enjoying my personal mini-superbloom. The cache and the location were so nice, I dropped a travel bug here as well. Hopefully someone will venture out this way again soon, but at least it is safe in this little corner of Cowles.

View of the Pyles Peak Trail near GC2RJJQ looking east

Not sure what these were, but they were pretty together

After enjoying the flowers, I continued along the narrow trail to find one more cache (Carpe Diem “A Birthday Bushwhack” (GC2R8ZN)). GZ was at a sharp bend in the trail, and with varying elevations, it took several tries to finally spot the good-sized ammo can. Cache maintenance, two ammo cans, and some beautiful sights… I would call that a great San Diego morning!

Pyles Peak trail offered some nice views and had a much different feel than the ‘front’ side that everyone else climbs. Although I didn’t have time on this trip, one can continue on this trail up to a ‘peak’ labeled as a viewpoint on most maps. North from there takes you to Pyles Peak and south returns you to Cowles Peak and the service road back to Barker Way. This hike provides a nice, much less crowded loop and gives you the opportunity to bag 6+ geocaches, a Dalmatian or two, and a couple of peaks. It can be brutally hot along here in the summer months, so if you decide to make this trek, be sure to bring plenty of water.