GC961ZR A Railroad Hero
Type: Traditional | Size: Micro | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: GeoDog74 @ | Hide Date: 02/07/2021 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N39° 25.398 W105° 12.052 | Last updated: 06/19/2022 | Fav points: 0
       

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There is no cell coverage in the canyon, make sure to download your coordinates offline before heading out!

This is a semi devious log only cache, hidden at the monument of the hero railroad engineer William G. "Billy" Westall.  On the afternoon of August 28, 1898 Westall who worked for the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad was headed back to Denver with 450 passengers.  Upon rounding the blind curve around dome rock, he noticed the tracks had been washed out by an earlier storm.  Billy managed to slow the locomotive enough that only the engine derailed, saving the passengers from harm at the cost of his own life.  

Learn more here: William G. "Billy" Westall

Update: Thanks to Cajrrman for sharing this information about the monument, that used to house a cache and was subsequently archived a decade ago: A Hero of the South Platte

02/13/2021 By LostinDenver
[FTF] 02-13-2021 at 3:23 pm. This morning I woke up with a purpose. I need an FTF today, but it's freezing outside. Literally below zero. So I waited until afternoon, checked the available FTFs and saw this one by a reliable, experienced CO who says it is snow friendly. That's exactly what I'm looking for. So I started out on the 1.25 hour drive from Aurora to the area outside of Foxton. The roads are pretty good and the ride was uneventful. That's good! I listened to NPR on the way over and heard some good stuff. It's the only radio channel that I reliably received.
Once at the GZ I was concerned about coords. Mine were bouncing and the difficulty of the cache made me worry. But I followed the app to zero on the coords and found the cache right there. Excellent job! My fingers were numbing after just few minutes outside. I took the cache back to the Jeep to sign in the warmth. The big reveal of the unrolled log let me know that I was the first person (after the CO) to find this cache. Yatah! I took a little time to appreciate the monument on the way back to replacing the cache.
Today I took a short caching trip in freezing weather for 3 finds. The temperatures varied from 3 degrees to negative one. The caches I targeted were not hikes and have not been DNFed. Pretty successful day. I took a few pics today, so some are random. Thanks for the cache!

02/07/2021 By IgnotusPeverell
Published