The Caravan to 4000

Last weekend we led a geocaching caravan to pick up a bunch of caches that were recently placed during and after an annual navigation rally. Saturday’s caravan consisted of three Jeeps (is that a caravan or is it just…three Jeeps?). Two of the three were the usual players, Mike and Cynthia (Geo-Jeeper) and Linda and Larry (L3-Geo). The third Jeep was a brand new Rubicon owned by Jim and Marga (GeoSpyder) and this was going to be it’s maiden off-road voyage! We met everyone in Carson City at 7:30 and headed up Goni Road into the Virginia Range.

Overlooking Carson City and Reno is McClelland Peak and it bristles with communication towers. Goni Road is there to access and service these towers. There is also a cinder mine halfway up the road with all of its requisite truck traffic. A myriad of dirt roads and Jeep trails wander off of Goni Road in all directions and that’s where the majority of the caches were hidden. Now I’m not going to bore you with a description of each of the 29 caches we found that day, but I will tell you of our adventure finding them.

After the first cache we needed to get back to Goni Road but I didn’t want to backtrack down the way we came (I hate to backtrack!) so we took another road that took us in the right direction but promptly ended about 10-15 feet ABOVE Goni Road. As others before had done we just went over the edge and slid down the steep slope to the road below and to a nearby cache. We then continued up Goni picking up a few caches here and there until we reached a dirt road that marked the beginning of the previously mentioned rally. We never saw Goni again…

The dirt road (and a cache, of course) led us to a hill top overlooking Washoe Valley and Reno. The views on this gorgeous summer day were spectacular! But…below us, far below us, two caches were calling to us. The road, no, the trail down to the caches was steep and slow with boulders to navigate around and rocks to crawl over but we all made it to the bottom without incident. The map indicated that we were located at the junction between a siphon and an aqueduct.

Back around a hundred or so years ago, Virginia City needed a plentiful supply of clean water and none could be found. So someone came up with a plan to transport water fifty miles from Marlette Lake, near Lake Tahoe, down and across Washoe Valley and then up to Virginia City. And all done without pumps. Imagine a “U” shaped tube with one end higher than the other. Now pour water in the high side and watch it go downhill and then uphill and pour out the other end of the tube. We were standing at the spot where the pipe from Marlette Lake emptied the water into the old aqueduct that carried the water to Virginia City. Very clever AND it’s still in use today (minus the aqueduct part).

The other cache down here was on a road that roughly paralleled the old aqueduct. This road was so flat that I thought at first it was the aqueduct. That thought disappeared when we found ourselves at the brink of another very steep slide down to a ravine below…and the cache. So, of course, we had to do it and down we went. Once down at the bottom we could see that the road continued up the other side and it was so steep and slippery that there was no way we could have made it up and still be married to our lovely wives. So we headed back the way we came. Still…I bet Jim’s Rubicon could have done it. Someday.

Once back up at the top (which top? There were so many), we headed roughly NNE to the summit on McClellan Peak (see, another top). We started the descent down the other side and quickly encountered a beautiful aspen grove, and a cache. It was too early for lunch so we reluctantly continued out into the bright sunlight. It didn’t take long to reach the place where the old aqueduct dumped into a large open square pit where the water was stored for Virginia City. Nearby is today’s version of a water tank. At the tanks we turned and headed down the aqueduct road in the opposite direction and picked up two more caches. Now we had driven along all of the aqueduct road (twice), found all the caches along the road and managed to avoid the aforementioned suicidal portion.

Back at the tanks we continued in our NNE direction picking up two more caches along the way. After slowly negotiating a very rough, rocky and barely discernable road we found ourselves at the junction of Jumbo Grade and Ophir Grade. Almost a hundred years ago there was a railroad running along here connecting Virginia City with Washoe Valley. Just west is the site of Jumbo, a Virginia City wannabe that never lived up to its name.

Again, we continued NNE up even higher out of the high desert into a more alpine setting. We stopped and had lunch under some real trees, not like those scraggly pinion pines below. After lunch we climbed some more along a narrow rocky trial that was washed out in places but still navigatable.

Our goal were caches around Ophir Hill, a 7782 foot mountain, not “hill”, overlooking Virginia City. One of those caches was on top of a smaller 7445 foot mountain known as Middle Hill. To get to Middle Hill we had to drive through a sheep camp with the trailer and accompanying dogs on one side and a herd of sheep on the other. Both the dogs and us were watching to make sure the sheep didn’t decide to panic. Beyond the sheep camp was hardly a trail leading straight up to the top of the “hill”. It looked like three, maybe four Jeeps could fit on top so we all made a run for it only to discover the top was already occupied by some bikers. Fortunately, we all fit with room to turn around and we were able to snag the cache without anyone being the wiser.

After crawling down Middle Hill and through the sheep camp we headed to the top of Ophir Hill and, unfortunately, down the other side on the steepest, rockiest and scariest road we have been on. We knew the cache wasn’t that far down and, indeed, we all made it down okay but the ladies did emit several short high-pitched squeaks. After finding the cache we could have continued sliding down this road into Virginia City OR we could retrace our route all the way back to the tanks. We chose life and headed back the way we came.

At the tanks we turned east and wound our way down to American Flats picking up a few more caches along the way. Once down on the Flat the road turned south. Off to the east you can see the concrete skeleton of an old stamp mill that is now the recipient of urban art and home to late night “parties”. On the south side of the Flat we stopped at a cache called “In View of American Flats”. I specifically mention that one because it was our 4000th find. After a short celebration we continued south heading through a canyon and hillsides recently burned by a wildfire. Once out of the canyon civilization came into view and after picking up a cache it was just a short ride to Hwy 50.

We were all tired, dirty and sore from bumping and lurching for the last 8 hours but, BUT, there was one last cache to get before we called it quits. At the point where we came out onto Hwy 50 it was just a quick jiggy jog across and onto Highlands Drive. At the end of the pavement we found ourselves on part of the old Virginia and Truckee railroad (minus the rails and ties). Originally, the railroad was built to run from Virginia City to Mound House and then points east. Later they extended the railroad west to Carson City and then to Reno. After an easy run out about a mile we stopped for the cache and headed back to Hwy 50 and then on to Carson City for some dinner before going home to Reno.