RV Winter Rambling 2006-07

“Ain’t no Mountain High Enough….”

I chuckle every morning when the realization hits that I don’t have to go to work. It hasn’t become second nature yet and it takes a few moments after waking to comprehend that we can lead a life of indolence if we so choose. Retirement is wonderful and I only wish we’d started sooner. It seems we spend our lives accumulating material possessions and then all of a sudden on retirement, we want to unburden ourselves and live like free spirits – well, some of us anyway. I do like the idea that our home is still waiting for us should we choose to return for a while but all the goods and chattels filling it are like an anchor.

This is our second winter of escaping the cold wintry north and I seem to be much more mellow – I don’t have the constant compulsion to move on. We are actually enjoying staying in one place for a while – it gives us a chance to delve into all the nooks and crannies of a town with the lure of ‘Geocaches’ as our tour guide.

Pilot Knob a solitary rocky hummock in eastern California at the juncture of Arizona and Mexico is strangely set apart from the Chocolate Mountain Range. Several caches have been secreted on and around the barren mountain and that’s what drew us. We parked our car in the desert outside the area marked “No trespassing” and we trespassed …… that’s where the coordinates aimed us. “It’s only a little more than half a mile” I said after scrutinizing the GPS. I didn’t take into consideration that it would be five times that distance as the GPS calculates ‘as the crow flies’. But we didn’t contemplate that the cache would be at the highest peak of the mount. We didn’t read all the facts on the info sheet, because if we had, the mention of the cache being ‘within arm’s reach of the solar tower’ would have been a good clue. If anyone had told me that I’d climb to the top of the Knob, I’d have thought they were nuts.

The beginning of the trail was a fairly easy hike. On the lower slopes, we encountered a man at a distance with a holstered gun glinting in the sunshine and a hiking pole, which he used to stab at gullies and under rocks. “There’s been ‘wetbacks’ all over here” he shouted over to us “they’ve left their water bottles and other garbage behind them.” He didn’t look like a border patrol officer – no uniform – but the gun intimidated us and we hastened up to get away from him. “Aren’t you glad you’re with a blonde?” I said to Fernie “otherwise he might have taken you for an illegal Mexican”.

The trail got steeper and narrower and sometimes disappeared and we had to clamber over rocks, which slid away beneath our feet cascading down the bluff. We wound up and around the outcroppings and when I reached a safe and level spot, I checked the GPS – we weren’t making much progress as we were still far away from our target. We looked down to see how far we’d climbed and noticed that a border patrol truck was inspecting our car, a tiny spot in the distance. Not much we could do about that, so we scrambled on up the interminable climb.


It was getting very difficult now with huge sheer rocks to scale and Fernie who was ahead yelled back “You’ll never make it – let me go up and you stay there”. I was disappointed and sat on a slab and scrutinized other possibilities up the remainder of the mountain. I decided to give it a try on an alternate route – it seemed like a nearly vertical climb but the rocks were smaller and I managed to scale them eventually reaching the top where Fernie had already found the cache. I was absolutely elated but my knees shook when I looked down. The fairly level top was only about eight feet across and held a white cross and a small solar panel and tower and we could see 360 degrees – Algodones, Mexico just below on the southern side, Yuma to the east, the Chocolate Mountains to the north and sand dunes and desert stretching to infinity. But how on earth would I get down? Ohmygawd! Members of the Sierra Club had placed the cache – folks who are in much better shape than I. The wind was keen and loose pages of the log blew free – we grabbed them and held on tight as we inspected the contents and proudly signed the log. A small metal plaque attached to a rock was a gruesome reminder that we were in a dangerous place. It was a memorial to a climber who had plummeted off the peak.

Eventually we had to go down and the first 30 feet was terrifying. When I’d dislodge a stone and it would send a stream of rocks hurtling down, I resorted to descending on my backside. It was a very slow descent and when we finally reached the lower trail, we chortled with delight on our accomplishment.


Not all geocaches provide such excitement - they are often in built up areas or urban parks but every one of them is a challenge and we venture out almost every day in hot pursuit.

posted by O'Leary @ 10:02 AM