Saturday, August 01, 2009
Dune Hike & Bushwhacking with Chuck and a Duck
Late in the week I threw out an invite on Facebook to join me hunting a group of caches in the dunes around Tahkenitch Creek between Reedsport and Florence. Chuck bit right away. Bad Duck waited until the night before to commit. The Three Amigo’s! Well, time will tell if the “amigo” part still applies at the END of the day!
Bad Duck carbing up First half mile on trail
Bad Duck had an afternoon committment so we started early - carb’d up with breakfast in Reedsport. Arrived at Tahkenitch Dunes trail head at 0800 and struck out for the first cache of the day - A Reason To Be Out Here. Nearly one half mile, this first stage took us through heavily wooded dunes - much appreciated shade later in the day on our return trip. Still on the main trail but now out in the open dunes we make our way to cache number two - Another Reason To Be Out Here! Found it quickly then moved on to the beach for the third and final cache on established trails - Tahkenitch Creek Cache. With these three caches under our belt the day began to get much more interesting…...
The next cache - Crap! Another Hill - was a half mile south in a small dune tucked behind a stand of mature pine and thick underbrush. Because we couldn’t see the small opening in the forest giving access to the small dune, we had to do a little guessing about how far to walk before cutting away from the low areas near the beach. We guessed wrong. To0 far south. Dang….back north a quarter mile we trekked until we spotted the opening. Soon we had this cache in hand. We took a break at this point because we knew the “big ticket” cache of the day (Elusive Butterfly) was next and was going to involve some serious bushwhacking.
As we departed our rest spot Bad Duck headed one way and I picked a slightly different direction figuring we’d end up close to the same point. Unfortunately, Chuck decided to follow me! I picked a brushier path and by the time we reconnected with Darren we both were wet from the dew on the brush and tree branches! Sorry about that, Chuck!
Finally down at the edge of Butterfly Lake, we encountered a small inlet of water to either walk around or cross a large log across. Darren and I chose the log - Chuck chose to go around.
I thought Ducks swam!!
Once past this obstacle we picked our way around the lake edge to the cache site - saw a beaver swim by along the way. Thankfully we made this trek in low water season - with the lake levels higher this would be a much tougher hike due to heavy brush right down to the high water mark. We found the cache fairly quickly. Now came decision time - choosing which bushwhack route to take back to the vehicle!
View of Butterfly Lake from near cache location.
After some looking around we headed into the abyss - a 100 foot tall forest of spruce with thickets of salal brush over our heads. It seemed that we’d just find a decent animal trail to follow only to have it fade away into another thicket. Three attempts at this and we finally just found the last cache on our GPSr’s and bulled our way through the brush towards it - trail or no trail. An hour later we emerged into the open dunes again….sweaty, scratched-up and breathing heavily! The return trip was a slow methodical pace with little conversation - except for the occasional “Gee wasn’t that fun?”.
Upon returning to the vehicles insult was added to injury when we discovered friendly notes from the parks personnel on the windshields reminding us we needed to pay the day use fee. Guess our expired passed didn’t fool anyone! (sheepish grin)
As I’ve said many times, geocaching is more fun with others. Despite the ugliest bushwhack I’ve ever done for a geocache it was a fun day. Thanks to Mackie for placing one out there and thanks to Chuck and a Duck for joining me.