Cronan Ranch Geocaching

Posted by Karen on 18-Mar-2007

(Click photo for all 41 photos)

Theresa and I headed over to Cronan Ranch Regional Trails Park to do some hiking and geocaching.  Cronan Ranch is a relatively new park in Pilot Hill and there are 12 miles of trail to explore, with more planned.  The American River Conservancy has an online trail map.  We started off by looking for the first geocache called “Hanging Out in the Old Corral” and I think it was Theresa’s cowboy hat that allowed her to be the one to find it.  Next on the agenda was the “Welcome to Cronan Ranch” cache, where lizards ran out and welcomed us.  We climbed hills and traipsed through weeds.  We successfully used our geometry skills to figure out the “Center of a Square”, but were unlucky when traveling around the circumference of a “100 Meter Circle”.  These were geocaches with a twist, the hider didn’t give us direct coordinates, but gave nearby points and we had to puzzle out from there where the cache was hidden.  We went for one called “Abazaba” up in the rocks on a hillside.  As we’re looking around Theresa shrieked and pointed out the biggest darned rattlesnake we’d ever seen!  Giving the rocks a wide berth, we circled around to see if maybe we could see the cache from the other side, but then I shrieked when I came upon another rattler, only a little bit smaller.  We called it good on that one and high-tailed it back to the trail, just in time to see some horse-riders coming at us full gallop.  We decided to take the smaller trail and head up the hills away from all the horse riders.  After we reached the top of the hill we started going across country, following deer trails and trying to avoid the oh too plentiful poison oak plants that were everywhere.  We found the first part of the “Scope it Out” cache, which had us look through a scope to see where the actual caches was hidden.  There are some very creative geocachers out and today they out-witted us on a couple.  But there’s always next time! 

GPS Stats: • Odometer: 5.87 miles  • Total Time: 5:18  • Moving Time: 2:48  • Overall Average Speed 1.1 mph  • Moving Average Speed: 2.1 mph

Comments

One Response to “Cronan Ranch Geocaching”

1. sckewi says:

   29-Mar-2007 at 3:09 am

   Some of the things you write about seem pretty dangerous, rattlesnakes for example! Yet I guess that makes it all the more fun. Out of interest did you have to do any maths to figure out the center of a square? Also I like that last bit, always next time. That’s the attitude to have with anything you enjoy doing in life IMO.

   Mar 29, 2007, 03:09 AM (UTC -7)

   Reply