GC1WQ7Z Ben Hielman's Grave
Type: Traditional | Size: Regular | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: guywildstorm @ | Hide Date: 08/02/2009 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N38° 35.063 W107° 23.369 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0

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Ben Hielman was a Forest Service Ranger for 26 yrs. It is men like this that make it possible for the rest of us to be able to get out and enjoy the beauty of areas like this. A well deserved thank you is needed every now and then. I thought a cache would be a good way of getting people to this place. While your here be sure and tell ole Ben thanks for the years of service.

You can drive right to the cache with most any vehicle. The roads do get nasty when they are wet so use caution if it looks like a chance of rain.

I changed the difficulty, I wasnt sure how hard this one would be to find. After a couple of DNF I thought I had better up the rating.

07/05/2015 By azstripper
tftc

06/20/2015 By crawfordcollins
Woo-hoo bonus smiley for me!! Went camping with family for the weekend and the CO joined us for a ride on Saturday. We took some new visitors to the grave and while everyone was looking at the headstone and the views, the CO stoops down and uncovers the cache! I didn't even know it was here! Everyone was questioning the legality of my logging it as a find and I conclude that I did have my GPS present and would have made the find if I had been intentionally hunting it so..... I'm claiming the smiley!! This is a great area that I have spent a lot of time in. It was a great day for riding and being in the mountains. Thanks for the cache, guywildstorm!!

07/31/2014 By cb_beauty
TFTC. Geocaching with Soldiergrrrl as we drive the West Elk Loop. This was a small sidetrack.

07/31/2014 By SoldierGrrrl
Many thanks for the cache. This is a beautiful area up here. CB_Beauty and I questioned our GPS, as we headed 8 miles UP into the mountains, but we've learned to carry a trailmap to ease our minds. We approached this one from the Crystal Creek cache and returned to the 92 from another trail. The difficulty is true for getting up here, but was actually quite easy to find. Took carabiner, left toy soldier.

08/06/2013 By elko dealers
We went to visit Homestead Elk Ranch and the GPS let us no there was a cache on up in the mountain on the same road, so off we went. Sure glad we did for the flowers & scenery are awesome. Saw lots of wildlife on the way to visit Ranger Ben We payed our respect to Ranger Ben and a storm was moving in, so we got out before it got to us.
Cache is in good shape & we replaced as we found or better.
SL T4TH