GC2DF8A CO Spirit Quest #306 - Kitty Lyon of Cipango
Type: Multi | Size: Regular | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: Tahosa and Sons & Kingjr & Denali41 & Others @ | Hide Date: 08/15/2010 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N40° 37.584 W105° 25.540 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0

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Read my Note

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! The Exciting Cache Series!

“COLORADO SPIRIT QUEST”

REMEMBER:

If you are APPREHENSIVE about cemeteries – AVOID this series.

The Colorado Spirit Quest is a series of Caches placed by many individuals, near cemeteries and historic sites in hopes of paying respect to the many pioneer ancestors that have ‘walked’ before us.

If you are interested in being a part of this project, contact may be made by sending an e-mail to the owner of “Colorado Spirit Quest #1 – Mountain Passage”.  Use the ‘Send Message” link at the center of the page of their profile.

There are hundreds of cemeteries in the rural and mountain communities across Colorado.  This series will introduce you to many of them.

The cache pages will provide a virtual history tour of the cemeteries and tombstones.

COLORADO SPIRIT QUEST is not affiliated with any other ‘Spirit Quest’ group.  Special thanks and credit are given to SixDogTeam who started the Indiana Spirit Quest in 2004. The idea has rapidly spread into many states.

The CSQ endeavor is an enormous and relentless task and will only flourish if there is a multitude of volunteer cachers  willing to place these caches. 

After locating the cache container, take some time to reflect back on the lives of those pioneers and the effort it took to make Colorado such a great state.

Each person that places a CSQ cache is responsible for its maintenance.

Thanks to Volunteers: Greasepot, Taylorgeotracker, Ivy Dog Parents, Team Boogity3, Grand High Pobah, Boborr 80909, Imusttravel2000, Buzz Lightyear I, Sandhill 49er, MrVolkswagen, Isisfan, LadyCoots, Rockymtn8iv, Fork-L-Man, TwoCs, Outdrlvr201, Condor1, 2Cachedivers, arthurat, smilz787, Kyotmoon, Mountain Roamer, Cuttie Pie, SugarPug, Team Tiger Pride, ernie66, drnetwork, Team w-bar-v, Dynamite Rabbit, Twins18, DustyKat, mtnbirders, The Johnson Family, RustyBeerCan & Marma, grymreaper, nteclpr, Irish.Eyes, Moose1 & Mama Moose, Joe Friday, 3cacheteers, Electronicgeek, Jake92, 3cacheteers, Dasha Aussies, KB0UMW, hiking_fool, and Tahosa & Sons, Denali41, Kingjr.

New VOLUNTEERS are always Welcome

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Kingjr pays a visit to Ms. Lyon

The honor of the ~FTF~ goes to COpackrat when she did her Tahosa-ganza, a caching feat that I've never seen or heard of. Imagine 24 of my caches in a week. WOW

And a very hearty congratulations to Kingjr, for an awesome place to assist me with a nice cache location.If he did not find the grave this cache would not of been possible.Thank you Justin. His cache hunt was an amazing tale of survival and use of the GPS in the backcountry. Sometimes you can find more that a cache in them thar hills. And after this adventure the Jinxes of Kitty have become quite apparent. Just ask those who have looked they will tell you of several very interesting caching adventures.

Here is a map of the begining of your sojourn. Bring a detailed map to plot your route after you find the 1st clue.

Trails Illustrated Map of Old Flowers Area

The Map used by Kitty's Parents when they settled the area.

East Side of Pine Mountain, the first waypoint, but where is the micro in the woods.

The elusive story of Cipango and Ms. Lyon

According to Jay Bosworth who has lived to the West of one of the waypoints from the cache known as The Sage Points the Way since 1894, Cipango was started by a Mr. Safely and his son. The Koenig brothers were also early settlers up there and they owned a mountain of quartz, that was impregnated with berillum. It is believed that this strata of white rock runs east and west no telling how far. Cipango was established on this strata because they thought there was gold in it.

It was Jay Bosworth that led the original search party back in the 1960's. to the lonely grave far west of his cabin. And according to the story the grave was in an aspen grove, not far from an abandoned saw mill site. It is only a short distance west of the old ghost town of cipango.

And that is about the only information that Mr. Dunning had in his book, Over Hill and Dale.

Additional Waypoints

10/27/2014 By Lord Mike
I was out with Team Laxson and Takes The Hard Way doing a maintenance run for the Cipango multi. We made the stop at the first part for me to get the info and then we headed to the final. It was fun seeing the melted cache contents and nice to see that it survived fairly well considering. SL. Thanks for the cache.

10/20/2014 By KingJR
came back via jeep on the 19th and all is well, the road behind the cache is gone forever! 12 feet deep washout in spots... the stone has been damaged and not sure how much longer it will be standing. I will be emailing a contact in the USFS about possible permission to remove, duplicate, and replace the stone...or have it repaired somehow.

10/19/2014 By Takes the Hard Way
I'm really behind in logging my finds....found this one while on a jeeping trip with Team Red Rubicon back in October.
SL

09/27/2014 By icezebra11
The jinx of Kitty Lyon continues as the cache was impacted by the High Park fire of 2012. I'm guessing today was the first time the grave site has been visited since the fire as this is the first "Found It" on this cache since a couple months before the fire started. Old Flowers Rd has been closed since the fire with the flood of September 2013 adding to the damage and delay reopening it.

This cache along with the others in this area has been on my radar for a long time and finally several weeks ago I gave up waiting for the road to reopen and decided to hike in. I started again today at the Old Flowers/Monument Gulch/Pingree Park junction. The hike today was 14 miles round trip with about 3400 feet of elevation gain but it was worth it because this was a special find for me today. It was the last Tahosa cache I needed to find to complete the Tahosa Caches Challenge (GC1PFYM)! I will write about the journey when I complete the hike to log that one.

I wasn't too optimistic that this one was still ok because the aerial photography on Google Earth showed the entire area around the posted coordinates was burned in the fire. I contacted Denali41 since he maintains Tahosa's caches and let him know I planned to go for it. He provided me the information needed in case any of the stages were destroyed and I agreed to make any necessary replacements of containers.

So off I went down Old Flowers for the third time in the last five weeks. It was a beautiful day, about 62° when I left the truck at 9:30 am and about 75° when I returned at 3:30 pm. There was a little breeze to make it comfortable and hardly a cloud in the sky. I arrived at the posted coordinates at noon and began my search. After looking for a few minutes I found the container but I could tell that the fire had gotten to it. I opened it up and sure enough, the information inside which had been a rolled up piece of paper was burned to a black tube that broke apart when I touched it. So I replaced the tag and re-hid it. After a sandwich, I headed off for the next stage.

When I reached the final location the whole area had burned in the fire. I found the container and it didn't look bad from the outside but when I opened it I found that it indeed had gotten hot. The plastic items had melted, including the ziplock that the log book was in. It took a little finesse but I was able to get the pages unstuck and open the log. It has melted plastic all over it but it is still usable! Signed the log and relished the moment of completing such a wonderful cache and awesome challenge.

Thanks Joe for this wonderful back country cache!!! I'm just waiting for you to return to the area because I'm sure you'll have more great caches in store for us.

07/18/2012 By Tahosa and Sons
Please stay away from the cache till either myself or Denali41 give the Ok to enter the area. And I can imagine this will not happen until the summer of 2014.


~Warning - Area is closed ! !

This entry was edited by Tahosa and Sons on Friday, 07 June 2013 at 14:20:46 UTC.