Saturday, September 23, 2006
Cummins Creek Wilderness
Today was the day to tackle the caches in this gorgeous wilderness. I had been planning this trek for months - breaking out the topo maps and studying the terrain trying to determine which route I would hike. Sometimes the planning effort is half the fun - okay, maybe not half! I get a kick out of anyway. During the time between when I first started planning this and today a new geocache and a terracache have been placed. Pat and I are camped at USFS Sutton Campground just north of Florence so I didn’t need to get up at the crack o’ dawn to accomplish this adventure.
I left the parking lot along HWY 101 at 10am and headed across the highway to the start of the west end of the Gwynn Creek Trail. This trail has some of the most awe inspiring old growth spruce, fir and cedar I’ve ever seen! I followed fresh elk tracks up the trail for the first two miles but never caught sight of any animals. A warm east wind was blowing in the tree canopies causing what seemed like a “snowfall” of conifer needles dropping to the forest floor. Took about three miles to get to the junction of the Gwynn Creek and Cook’s Ridge Trails where the “Gwynn Creek Huff n Puff” geocache was to be found. I made the hunt for the cache waaaay harder than I needed - fell into the “overthinking it” mode but was able to locate it by going back to the hint and reading carefully. From there I headed east along the Cook’s Ridge Trail another mile then south on the Cummins Creek Trail taking me out to the Cummins Basin Viewpoint where a new cache had been placed. A bonus at this spot was a recently placed Terracache only 180 feet away. This was my first terracache found and it was a FTF to boot! Ate lunch and took in the awesome views. It was now about 1pm. I had another 4+ miles down the Cummins Ridge Loop/Cummins Creek Trail to complete my epic trek.
You’re given a choice of trails back to the Cummins Creek Trailhead at this point - Cummins Creek Loop or Cummins Creek. I highly recommend the Loop if going from the viewpoint west down to sea level. Up close to huge trees all along the way - seems more enjoyable that following an old road. However, if you’re starting from the Trailhead and going UP to the viewpoint you might want to take the slightly longer but easier grade Cummins Creek Trail. The Loop trail has a pretty good grade to it.
So around 2:30pm I get nearly down to the trailhead where I have to take a less travelled trail offshoot down to Cummins Creek to look for another recently placed cache - a MICRO! Sheeesh! It took about 40 minutes to locate! I didn’t feel too bad about that because several other finders commented about it taking them a long time to find as well. Finally get back to the truck at 3:20pm.
Called Pat who was in Florence checking out shops and a museum and since she wanted to look around a little longer I hunted a couple more caches along the main highway in the vicinity.
The only cache left in this area for me to get is the “Cummins Ridge Travel Bug Trade Cache” (a 6 mile round trip hike). Since Pat and I liked the Sutton Campground so well and plan to come up again next weekend, I will probably tackle that one then.
These caches reminded me again of why I geocache - a great adventure in GOD’s beautiful creation!