GC5VMFA Sheep Series: Garden of the Gods
Type: Mystery | Size: Micro | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: Colorado Gypsies @ | Hide Date: 05/25/2015 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N38° 52.713 W104° 52.188 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0
     

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A multi-stage field puzzle hybrid cache through Garden of the Gods and the sixth cache published in our Sheep Series.

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A series celebrating the proliferation of Sheep Mountains and other Sheeps of prominence in the Pikes Peak Region.

Make sure to copy the puzzle piece stapled to the log and save it for the Sheep Series: Final.
Either:
Bring a pen and paper and draw the blocks and letters or
Take a picture or
Write down the link URL or
Scan the QR code with your smart phone.

Okay. This is not a Sheep of prominence. But you will get to see a real (though expired) Bighorn Sheep and there's a chance of seeing live sheep. If you've ever owned or desired a secret decoder ring, this is the cache for you. It's a little more than a 2 mile hike round trip through Garden of the Gods with plenty of decoding. You can enjoy this cache without completing the rest of the Sheep Series but why not keep venturing further up and further in. :-)

This cache puzzle requires some preparation but no special skills or knowledge are needed aside from following instructions. No decoder ring needed.
--Firstly, the Code Sheet looks like this:

--Print out the PDF of the Code Sheet located Here. You may also want to print this cache listing to follow my byzantine instruction regimen.
--Then bring the Code Sheet, a paper hole puncher, pen, additional paper, GPSr and binoculars (not required) to the Garden of the Gods Visitor center. The visitor center is open daily from 8-7 Memorial Day through Labor Day and from 9-5 the rest of the year.
--Find the Bighorn Sheep mounted on a wall of animals upstairs. On a nearby touch screen navigate to the Bighorn screen. Write down the first 6 words of the second paragraph on a separate piece of paper ignoring spaces. You should have 23 letters starting with T and ending with n.
--Using the hole punch and starting at the top left of the Code Sheet, punch out the letters of the sentence you wrote down, in order, as they appear from left to right, skipping letters, symbols or spaces that aren't in the sentence, until you have 23 holes total punched in the first 3 lines of the code sheet.
--Now flip the Code Sheet over so it's blank with holes on the bottom. The bottom left hole will be the 'Key' Hole and the bottom right hole will contain the Next-Key. (You may want to label those 2 holes with arrows.)
--Finally, the first Key is '1'. Fold the paper until the number 1 appears in the Key Hole. Copy the letters visible through the other holes (ignoring spaces) and follow those instructions. The characters in the Key and Next-Key holes are not part of the message. After completing the instructions, place the Key Hole over the next Key and repeat until you find the cache and a secret message :-).

Notes: Stay on posted trails at all times. Do not take short cuts or cut corners.
--For all coordinates assume N 38 52.xxx W 104 52.xxx
--In accordance with city park regulations the cache is a small micro located right off of a trail.
--The park is open from 5am-11pm from May 1- Nov 1 and from 5am-9pm the rest of the year.

Congratulations to WingsAndTales for being FTF.

If you liked this field puzzle you could try one of our other (very different) ones- Our field puzzles.

The other Sheep Series caches are Here.

Additional Waypoints

11/24/2018 By Sreklof
Last day and last Cache this year in the US. We need three visit in the Garden for finding this Cache ! First: A wonderful puzzle to look for this one. A sunny day with much fun ! At the end we didn't find something to log in. Second: we looked once more round the final - but much snow hindered us to find this one. Third: Today we come back with a helpful hint from the owner . And - we found this very special hidden cache ! For this one a big favor point !! Thanks for much fun.
#2139

04/17/2018 By RPieperCO
Thanks for the fun puzzle cache! I wanted to get out and enjoy some fresh air and pretty scenery today after work. I headed over this way and made it to the final pretty easy. Hmmm... This took me a bit longer than anticipated. Pretty sure I touched and moved the cache several times before I had the right angle and saw the tell tale signs of a well hidden cache! Took some effort to get the log out but not too bad. Signed and stamped the log and replaced everything as found. Thanks for this one in a beautiful setting!

03/03/2018 By nikomint16
Found a sticker but no cache

07/02/2017 By -E T-
I was in the neighborhood and checked on the container. It had washed down a gully a few feet. Replaced it at the base of a small tree

11/15/2016 By TexDoc56
This one is close to home and when I first looked at it, I thought it might be complicated. However, once I got into it, it was a pretty easy solve. Even without a checker or checksum, the final coords made sense.
Got to GZ and saw something that is consistent with the theme of this cache but I could not come up with a container even with an expanded search.
I'll keep an eye on this one.

10/15/2016 By k9jayhawk
Early cache run with OF-Erad...TFTC SL