The Curse of Pringle Mountain

We decided last night that it might be fun to go for a hike and maybe try for a geocache that we had previously attempted early last summer, but didn't get close to. Grey skies and a few flurries in the morning but why not try the most difficult cache listed in Richmond County, 5 star difficulty, 5 star terrain. Geocaches are rated by the star system 1 is the easiest 5 the hardest. We left the house around 10 am and drove up to Oban and parked at the end of the trail to Pringle Mountain. I used Garmin Basecamp last night to plan the route out. I set up a couple of waypoints along the route because when we made the trek in the summer we did a lot of exploring and backtracking trying to find the right way into the lake where the cache is located. There was quite a bit more snow on the ground here than there was at home. We left the car at 10:30. The first part of the hike is all uphill (180m over 2 km) It didn't seem too bad going up, but about 1 km in; the 4 wheeler track that we were walking in stopped and we were in soft snow that was over our ankles. It doesn't sound like a lot of snow, but it makes a big difference. By the time we got to the top of the hill we had worked up quite a sweat. There were quite a few coyote tracks around so I kept a good eye out. I wasn't worried but since the attack this summer in the Highlands NP it makes me a little more wary than I used to be. There were lots of other tracks in the snow as well. We came across one track across the path that looked like something was drug across the path. 

I thought that maybe it was a bobcat or lynx that was dragging its kill?? Just guessing. Anyway the hike was so nice going in. The shelter of the trees was making it very nice and it was getting sunny as we got closer to the lake. We got to the waypoint I set at the entrance to the trail that led into the lake at 11:30. It was just a quick walk into the shore of the lake from the main trail. Once we got there it was good to see that there was ice on the lake because the cache is on a small island in the middle of the lake. We set out along the shore, not quite ready to trust the ice because of the mild weather we have been having all winter. It was a lot colder out of the lee of the trees. Once out on the ice we soon saw that there was lots of ice on the lake.

The small island was easily visible once we were out on the lake and we set off at a good pace once we were confident that there was enough ice. There are a few islands in Pringle Lake, its pretty rocky as well. As we walked past the biggest of the islands we could see tracks made by otters sliding in the snow. By the time we made it ti the island that the cache was on we were feeling a little chilled because of how warm we got on the way up the mountain in the shelter of the trail, out on the lake the wind didn't take too long chilling us.

The gps was pointing 30 m inland on the island and once we broke through the thick brush on the shore there was a clearing on the highest point of the island. The hint for the cache read "sit under a log in the clearing" well there were a few logs but none high enough or big enough to sit under. We started searching and spent an hour searching this little clearing and its surrounding brush, no cache. We started to get a chill from standing still after being so warm on the way up. As we searched it got darker and started to snow, quite a bit :-( ughh. By now it was lunchtime so I grabbed my bacon cheeseburger meatloaf sandwich and a cup of coffee to take a minute and hopefully find the cache with fresh eyes. Caoimhe was having a good time chewing sticks and bumming meatloaf sandwich from me and tea biscuit and jam from Martha. I re read the hint and logs of the people who found the cache before us to try and get a hint of where it was.

After another half an hour of searching we called it quits. The hiders ears must have been burning cause Martha had a few choice names for him :-). We set off the way we came except this time the wind and blowing snow was in our faces as we crossed the lake. It felt like a tropical beach when we made the tree line on the opposite shore.

We kept moving to warm ourselves up and after a few minutes of walking in the shelter of the trail we were warm again. A little disappointed with a second no find on this cache. We noticed the hill as we made our way back up to the top of Pringle Mountain before going back down the other side. Still enjoying the still quiet in the shelter of the trail, all of us moving a little slower than on the way in. The burn in the legs pretty pronounced :-)

So we made it back to the car at 2:00, 10.6 km later. The lesson learned this trek was not to go too hard at the start of the hike and work up a sweat, when you stop later, or take a break it doesn't take too long to get chilled. This is a great hike. The trail goes all the way to West Bay, and maybe next time we hit this trail we might try to go all the way there instead of trying to find that damn cache again. I'll email the cache owner and ask him if the cache is on the ground, he is inexperienced and did not give enough detail for such a difficult cache. I'll give the Everytrail map below, but under that will be the link to Garmin connect too.

Pringle Mountain Geocache

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Pringle Mountain Rubix Geocache hike

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I have found a new place to upload GPS data which seems to work better than Garmin connect, I have added the track data from Everytrail to the entries, we will see how it goes..

First walk on the ice for 2010

I guess this morning was a calm before the storm. Beautiful morning, not so much now, its grey and snow on the way. We got up this morning and headed out for the Lake Loop hike joined by Tara and her two pups Larry & Bertha. We diverted from our usual route so Tara could see our geocache. Once down by the lake I couldn't resist going out on the ice. Once out there I realized it was actually pretty thick. So off we went along the edge of Crawley Lake. There is something about walking out on the ice, I really enjoy it, gives a different perspective on familiar surroundings. Looking forward to doing it again and seeing how far the track actually is.

Went for a quick lunchtime run today (21/01/2010) turns out the hike is 5.4 km :-)

Crawley Lake Hike (new)

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The Source

Winter has been pretty mellow so far. Another beautiful day for a walk. I wanted to re enable our one cache hide called The Source.  It was set as a micro that was not winter friendly. We picked up when "winter" started and disabled the listing on www.geocaching.com I made a bigger container out of a Tim Horton's coffee can :-) We took it up to its location on the shore of Crawley Lake, its an offshoot trail from the Crawley Lake Loop that I have already uploaded.

Once the cache was placed I used the Oregon to average the coordinates so they would be very accurate. Its not a hard cache to find once you get to the location but its a great spot. We are going to try and put caches in beautiful spots and make them family friendly, not too hard to find. I think that any kids that are out would start to get frustrated if they are not able to find the caches.

Once we had the cache placed we finished the lake loop. Nothing momentous, just a beautiful walk, we actually got a little warm up in the lee of the trees. Going to try and place a couple more caches in the coming weeks.

River Tillard to Sporting Mountain Rd Take 2

Another beautiful sunny day, a little cooler, -14 with the wind chill. Yesterday someone listed that they had found the two caches on the River Tillard trail. We jumped in the truck and headed to the Sporting Mountain end of the trail to go in from that direction. We headed in around 1:30 and its only about 460 meters in from that end for the first one. They haven't done anything further on that end of the trail since we were last there. We got to the location and I started looking for the cache. It is on the edge of a stream and hidden amongst some large boulders. I was just getting ready to call it in a second time when I spotted the well camouflaged cache container.

I grabbed the container and stamped the log and was going to sign it when I noticed the pen in the cache didn't have any ink in it. Martha ran back to the truck for a pen while Caoimhe and I sniffed around the area :-) We signed the log, put the cache back and continued on the trail to the waterfall cache. The person that logged the find yesterday said they crossed about 50 meters upstream from the cache. I decided to brave it and looked for a shallow spot to cross. I picked a wide slow moving spot and lucked out that the water just barely stayed below the top of my boots. Once across I made my way through dense underbrush to the salmon ladder.

The description said the cache was under some rocks at the end of a "canyon" The salmon ladder is dry now so the canyon was the concrete walls of the ladder. There was a suspicious pile of stone at the end of one of the runs so I had a look there while Martha and Caoimhe chased squirrels on the other side of the stream.

Here is one of my beefs so far with geocaching. Some people who hide caches take great care in choosing containers and logbooks and trade items for inside. Some people go through a huge effort to take you to places that you may not have normally ever ventured, like the end of a long unused salmon ladder next to a small waterfall I probably would never have seen. If you bring someone here to see your cache put a little effort into the cache. This container was an old margarita mix bucket with junk inside it. I was the second person to sign the logbook and pages were already falling out of it. I mean I appreciate the fact that the hider went through a lot of effort to put the cache there, but if you are going to bring people to your special spot why not put a bit of effort into the cache as well. It is a bit anticlimactic in my opinion to find a bucket of junk in a beautiful location like this little waterfall. I am not complaining by any means, just a little disappointed, and its not the first time.

So this is for sure a beautiful walk  and I would suggest it to anyone even if they are not looking for the caches. Hopefully we will get out somewhere else this week to add another entry.

Here is the track for the Sporting Mountain to River Tillard leg of the trail. I'll update as I get better at managing the data itself.

River Tillard - Sporting Mountain

Ghost Beach Breach Geocache

We had to go to Port Hawkesbury to get a few things at the grocery store and it was such a beautiful day that we didn't want to waste it. We wanted to go for a little hike as well so we thought we would try to find this cache. It was our first cache in quite a while, it was also our first time hiking the Trans Canada Trail. I was excited to see the trail but we were really disappointed considering this is where the Trail meets Cape Breton Island. The first few hundred meters of the trail runs along a chain link fence topped with barbed wire enclosing a very busy work area with heavy equipment ??? Once we were past the Transport Canada compound the trail opened up along the coast and was pretty nice. The trail is on a sandbar type beach that creates a lagoon in the Strait. You would think that we would be smart enough to try this in July or August not the middle of January!! 
There is a metal bridge spanning a small channel along the trail and Caoimhe was not too impressed with the thought of crossing. Ever since she was a pup she was afraid of crossing bridges, especially metal ones like the one at the St. Peter's canal across the lock. Once she was on she went cautiously, kinda funny to watch the way she hugged close to the ground. She overcame her fear of the bridge though and did really well coming back. The wind was coming down the Strait of Canso and we could see a wall of flurries making its way up the strait. It was warm (+1) and sunny when we left St. Peter's, definatly not that warm walking along the beach!!! Noticed a set of coyote or dog tracks walking straight along the trail.  Caoimhe didn't give them a sniff but continued her mouse hunting obsession that she has had since she caught and killed one on the Lake loop. When we got to the cache location I re-read the description and it said that the cache was amongst some boulders next to a piece of sandstone with an "X" on it. There were a few piles of sandstone making up part of the breakwater but we couldn't see an X anywhere. We searched amongst the boulders and  finally found the cache a good 10 to 15 meters away from the posted coordinates. It was an ammo can with a trade items inside. We signed the log and used our stamp for the first time. It was really nice to find a cache, especially a nice cache in a good container. There are so many caches around that are in crappy containers, or micro's, which we are not fans of. (Micro - 35 mm film canister or smaller – less than approximately 3 ounces or .1 L – typically containing only a logbook or a logsheet) We took a few pictures, then Martha found a good piece of driftwood that I am going to try and turn into a hiking stick. I'm going to try and mount our Parks Canada geocoin in the stick. 

When we were almost back to the car, I stepped off the trail and into a hole and my ankle is pretty sore and swollen this evening, just shows, stay on the trail if you can't see whats under the snow to either side. Below is the link to the track log on Garmin Connect. I'm going to have to check the settings on the Oregon, it says in the uploaded data that the trek took 4.5 hours, it was really about an hour. Still learning the ins and outs!

Ghost Beach Breach Geocache

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Ghost Beach breach geocache hike

Crawley Lake Hike (short)

Woke up this morning with a fresh covering of snow, warm and sunny, 1 Celsius so off for a quick jaunt around the lake loop as we call it. In November of 2009 I was diagnosed with diabetes, and as part of our exercise routine to get it under control we started walking. We would walk up to Crawley Lake, St. Peter's water supply. Once the ice froze we ventured out and walking along the lake we found a maze of 4 wheeler trails. Eventually after walking and exploring the trails we started to follow a route that brought us in a loop past the lake and down Carter's road back out to the West Bay Highway. When the lake is frozen we cross the West Bay Highway and out onto the Bras d'or Lake. We walk along the Lake to the bottom of James Rd, the street we live at the top of. Since there isn't a bit of ice on the Lake we have to settle for a jaunt on the side of the road back home, which isn't quite as peaceful or tranquil as a walk on the ice. The local dog population likes to come out and "greet" Caoimhe, and there is no sidewalk so the traffic has to be watched. Once we get some ice I'll add the full portion of the walk that we take out on the ice.

Crawley Lake Hike

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Click on the link below to see the track log of the hike.

Crawley Lake Hike (short)

River Tillard to Sporting Mountain Rd

This is my first blog post ever!! Perhaps my last. This is an attempt to try and keep a journal of our hiking adventures. Probably a bit of geocaching thrown in as well. We use a Garmin Oregon 300 for geocaching and since have become interested in hiking and mapping these hikes and trails with track logs and uploading them to Garmin Connect.

Yesterday January 1, 2010 was a beautiful day sunny and between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius. My wife Martha, myself and our lab Caoimhe did not to waste such a beautiful New Years Day. We had noticed a couple of new caches were posted in the River Tillard area a few weeks ago. We had driven close to one of them last week and discovered the construction of a new multi purpose trail by the NTC. So we decided to park in River Tillard and have a look for the caches while checking out the progress of this trail. The trail is mainly being constructed on an old railway bed. A good size stream meanders along side the trail and about 4 km in from the River Tillard side there is a waterfall and old salmon ladder.

The work is ongoing. They are cutting brush/trees and leveling the trail with heavy machinery. Easy going and nice and level. Not much of a challenging hike, but a good way to get out in nature and not worry about busting an ankle :-)

We made it to the location of the first cache but did not get it because of the high water levels, it is on the other side of the stream at the waterfall. By this point it was heading for 3:00pm so we decided to return. The trail is going to eventually go to Louisdale from River Tillard.

If you click on the link below it will take you to the Garmin Connect site.  18/01/2010 edit I have updated the track log, it shows one way and the player goes in reverse of the way we went but the track itself is more accurate, still messing up the time lapse though.

River Tillard - Sporting Mountain Trail

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River Tillard to Sporting Mountain Rd