Watchtower R-15

Over the holiday I was able to collect 14 geocaches from and around the Applegate Lake area.
One of these caches took me to a Fire lookout tower, located on Squaw Peak the peak is at 5000 feet.
It was about a mile hike up a road, with a little snow in the shady areas, other wise, it was a nice walk.
Finding the cache was another story, the cache description was done very poorly, I new this going in, so I went prepared to work for this one.
I had the description as will as the logs from other geocahers that had found it, down load into a palm pilot. This type of caching is called paperless caching.
After getting up to the lookout, I ate some roasted cashes nuts to build my strength up, and then I start looking all around the tower.
This tower is different from most, its seat on the ground on top of the hill, most others are on tall legs that can be 30 to 60 feet up into the air.
(see pictures)
A side note, the forest service will let you rent these, the lookout towers by the day, this could be and different thing to do for a anniversary, or what ever. Ours is in February, to much snow.
Back to the hunt, I looked and looked and started reading for any details I could get from the other logs and found one that said, that it was not at the lookout.
Where else could it be?
There was the note about don't use the outhouse, I thought that was a odd note, so about 200 feet away was the little house.
Very clean and painted nicely and there seat the cache just inside the door.
I took some video of the surrounding area, turn the sound up you can hear the wind, see Squaw lake down below.

How to Catch A BigFoot.

Out geocaching over the week end and happened by the Bigfoot trap in the Applegate Lake area.
Found a smaller version of a Bigfoot in the trap, but the trap did not spring,so she escaped.
This is a real trap, build to catch the BigFoot, its about half to three quarters of a mile from the main road.
At the time this was build, the Lake was not there, the Town of Copper was about mile or more away. (town of Copper, another blog)














As a kid in summer of 1969, Bigfoot was quite the thing.
My Dad took the hole family to see this expert talk about how important a find this was and that we need to watch for them in our own back yards.
This big to do, was held at the fair grounds in Grants Pass, at the time there was only one building there, that would hold the numbers that showed up to see the wonderful event. Any other building in the fair grounds, that was bigger would house animals only.
They showed the 8mm movie film of the creature walking away from the camera man as he is trying to keep up with the creature, running with the camera going so its pretty bouncy.
Looking back on the event, it was pack wall to wall with only standing room left.
This was a serious thing, a monster in our woods.
The creature was spotted about hour and half from Grants Pass, outside of a little town of Happy Camp, a place about the size of Wimer.
The areas main source of industries was logging and mill work.
So if your going to be in the woods 8 to 12 hours a day, you better know what you dealing with.
It all funny now, but not then.
I pasted and copy, some stuff from Wikipedia, so you could see some of the history of the Big Foot.
(Patterson-Gimlin film was the one shown and one of these person spoke at the showing)
1958: Two construction workers, Leslie Breazale and Ray Kerr, reported seeing a sasquatch
about 45 miles northeast of Eureka, California. Sixteen-inch tracks had previously been spotted in the northern California woods.

1967: On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin captured a purported sasquatch on film in Bluff Creek, California in what would come to be known as the Patterson-Gimlin film

In 1958 bulldozer operator Jerry Crew took to a newspaper office a cast of one of the enormous footprints he and other workers had been seeing at an isolated work site in Bluff Creek, California. The story and photo garnered international attention through being picked up by the Associated Press (Krantz, 5). Crew was overseen by Wilbur L. Wallace, brother of Raymond L. Wallace. Years after the track casts were made, Ray Wallace got involved in Bigfoot "research" and made various outlandish claims. He was poorly regarded by many who took the subject seriously. Napier wrote, "I do not feel impressed with Mr Wallace's story" regarding having over 15,000 feet of film showing Bigfoot (Napier, 89).

Shortly after Wallace's death, his children called him the "father of Bigfoot". They claimed Ray faked the tracks seen by Jerry Crew in 1958. There were some wooden track makers among Ray's inherited belongings which the family said were used to make the 1958 tracks. At the height of the publicity, the Wallace family sold the story rights to a Hollywood filmmaker. The film, set to star actor Judge Reinhold, was never produced.

OOOoouch! (PG-13)

WARNING: Must be age thirteen to view this.

The reason for the PG-13.

I burned my right hand about about four week ago.
I have been taking picture of the healing process, and looking pretty good right now.
Just one of those things, if you play with fire long enough you are bound to get burned. In my case I was not playing with fire, I was being paid to play with fire, and work is not suppose to be play, right.
It seems, that no one is willing to set the bus on fire, to cut these bolts, that strip real ease, most of the time its 4 bolts, two on top and two from the bottom.
You use a cutting torch, with heat in the 2500 to 3500 degree range, in a really small area, so most people don't wear a glove on the right hand, so that you can control the knobs and valves.(had a left glove, its closes to the flame)
I cut the top 4 bolts and with much trouble, there made of nickel, very heat resist its bolts.
The bottom 2 bolt, got the one ok, and was moving a light with my right hand and move it right past the torch head, only about .5 sec. exposer.
I had to finish the job, cut the last bolt, and got out were I could see what I had done, not good, got a bucket of water, to cool it down, it was in there about hour before, Dr. looked at it.( the water really makes a different s)
So heres how it looks today, and going back.
This is a third degree burn.
About 3 weeks old.
About 2 weeks old.

About 24 hours.

The day after the burning.

Treasure Hunting Again

Went diving at Howard Praire lake Saturday and found some treasures.
A Shakespeare pole and reel and and boat anchor.
Water temperature 51 to a high 52 degrees, not to bad, I was really cold after dive 2.
The vize was a good 20 feet at 35 to 40 feet down and than it got real foggy after that, I did get down to 52 feet.
This gives me 50 dives in about 18 months, not every close to Ben's 100+ dives in a year.
The numbers you see below are averages from the 50 dives that I have completed. Like the W/temp stand for the average temperature of 59 degrees or the Minutes with the 37 is the average bottom time I get from a tank of air.
I hoping to see the depth and bottom time numbers go up in time.

		Depth	Minute	top time	air used	W/temp	Vizes
		56 Ft.	37	2.21	2233	59	14

The spot that I dive at this time was really pretty good spot to get in at, because I could almost back the car into the water, but I did not to this but I only had about a 30 feet walk.

Harry Potter Is Done

I have finished the Harry Potter series.
I started withe book 1 in January 07 and had them all read by July, just so I could get read to start book 7 witch I started about mid September. I did this so that I could connect all the stories into one.
I had reach the end of book seven on October 31, I didn't really plan it that way, but thats how it come out.
The series was really fun to read, it sad that it was to end.
There will be no more books to look forward to.
But then if J.K. Rowling was to start another series, I would bet that the story will not be as big of a hit as Harry Potter was.
Of cores that is my opinion.
And now we have Ben doing a death defying leap over the Harry Potter books, will Harry ever find any rest.

The Old Fire House Cache

I was out caching after work, I hadn't been it seem in about 4 weeks, only seem that way.
And the cache was call the FireHouse cache.

The first time I came to this fire House, I was about 12 years old and it was 1968.
The front was coved with this really big ivy, the stock at the top of the door was as big as my leg,(I had small legs back then).
We had only live in the area about 2 months and the Grants Pass Parks Department, had this thing, where they would take you on a hike some place for $15 or $20, and it was for 2 days and you get stakes to eat and a ride in a van.
Will, my Mom thought this would be good way for me to meet some people and go on a hike.
What I don't remember, Mom saying were the hike was.
What I quickly learns after Mom drop me off and said I will pick up tomorrow at 5 pm.
I was going climb Mt. McLaughlin.
Everyone in the Parks Office said its an easy hike, we have old people hiking.(like 35 or something)Ha Ha
I had this old steel frame smoke jumpers pack. Didn't weigh to much walking around the yard with a sleeping bag in it.LOL
The guide, one guy, about 25 years old and there was about 8 hikers, I think I was the youngest at 12 and the oldest was about 17 years old. Four boys and four girls, And oh ya, the guide had hike the mountain coupe time,ha ha.We going to get lost?
So now I get a good look at the mountain as we're going over Blackwell hill. And what do I see is there is snow down past chicken point.(this is were all the chicken hikes turn around)
We get to the parking area and load are packs on to are backs and I find out, I have to carries my own food, were is the other guide who's going to carry my back?
The plan was to hike up to the lake and set-up camp and spend the night and go up in the morning.
My pack got really heavy quickly, about 1/4 mile in to it. The pack was way heavy for my 65 pound body, the pack must have weighed 50 pounds.
So the hike to the lake was about 1 1/2 miles but it felt like 5 miles. And the other kids in the group, weren't doing any better.
Got the lake about noon and had some food, and I make sure that food in my back got eaten first, I was not going carrier it back out.
It was about 1pm now and the guide says we have enough time to climb to the top and back down if we leave now.
We vote on it as a group, we'd just eaten and we are all dumb and happy and going leave the pack at the lake, and of coarse, you can not see the mountain at all from the lake, actually can't see the top for about 3 more hours up the trail. What a trick that was.
We started hiking and hiking and hiking.
And now we can see the top from the trail, and there is lots of snow.
So now we are in the snow and here the good part.
Four out of nine of the hikers had hiking boots on. the rest had something less than that, like basketball shoes or deck shoes. Luck for me I had boots.
When we reached the snow we took turns kick holes in the snow for the others that did not have boots.
This took some time, as you may guesses.
We hit chicken point about 8 pm and I got to the top by 10 and the last one of the group get there about 11.
And now it was really to dark to hike down, and our guide thought so to, so we stayed on top at 9,995 feet.
We did not have any thing with us, no food, no wood for fire, no sleeping bags or blanks. I did have a jacket as will as some of the others, but our feet were wet, I had wool socks so that helped, as long as I moved around.
We spent the night in the bottom of the old look out, witch was only just the footing, no top.
It was sometime in July, and it didn't get to cold, I would guesses about 45* degrees.
We huddle together to stay harm, and kept trade place from inside the group to the out side, to harm up.
The sun comes up pretty early 9 thousand feet, so it hit the top about 5am, we were standing out in it and harming are self a soon we could.
By 6am we were move down the mountain and staying in the sun that hole time.
Again we had to fight the snow, and got our feet wet again.
Back at the lake by noon, and the stake never tasted so good. And to be harm was wonderful thing to behold.
Took a nape and back to down the hill to the van and back to Grants Pass by 5 and Mom show up.
And I ate again a big dinner and took another nape.
And thats the first time that I was at the fire house.
PS I think the night on the mountain is why my feet are alway cold ??

Mt. McLaughlin from the top of Pilot Rock, looking NE.