GC1Y0HY The Crystal Stairs
Type: Traditional | Size: Regular | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: Wulff pack @ | Hide Date: 08/30/2009 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N39° 37.401 W105° 18.309 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0

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Cache is a camo-ed biscotti container, hidden in the granite cliffs of Bell Park. An area known to the neighborhood folks as "the Crystal Stairs" because of coarse crystals that fill fractures in the rock.

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The cache is located on public land, within boundaries of Bell Park, but there is private land to the north. Do not approach the cache from Liberty Drive because you will have to cross private land to reach it from Liberty Drive.

We used to call this area "the Crystal Stairs" when we hiked up here in the 1990s. The approach is little more difficult than before (there now is a gated community bordering the rock outcrop to the north). You must hike through the park, using a combination of jeep trails, game paths and plain old-fashioned bushwhacking. You can park on Stanley Park Road (south of geocache), or at the end of White House Trail (northwest of geocache):

Parking coordinates for White House Trail
N 39 37.262
W 105 18.249

The access is the lower (and smaller) of the 2 driveways on the outside of the last bend on WHT (at the "Treasures" sign). You can park at the bend in road and begin hiking up the driveway to the left. Keep going straight into the park (don't go around the big bend in the driveway). The lower part of the driveway is historic hiker access to Bell Park, the upper part is private.

You can also park at this turn-out on Little Cub Creek Rd:

N: 39 37.173'
W 105 18.625'

Just aim for this waypoint once you are in the park:

N 39 37.314'
W 105 18.562'

The actual crystal formation (small squarish white crystals that fill parallel linear fractures) are north of the geocache, on private land. Instead of crossing the property boundary, you can see the actual crystal formation in the pictures I posted in the gallery.

04/15/2019 By COHodag
Mileage tag for a rescued geocoin!

04/15/2019 By COHodag
Beautiful day for a hike, so I explored a park I'd never visited before. TFTC (Found a geocoin proxy that was MIA! I love when these resurface!)

07/08/2018 By PantalaNagaPampa
Found with evgnhiker on a hot summer day while exploring the Bell Park area. A log in 2016 says that a land-owner claimed that the caches on the ridge are on private property, which I do not believe is accurate. This particular cache is the closest in the park to any private property and is still on property owned by City and County of Denver and just south of land owned by Evergreen Park & Rec District. I imported my gps tracks into Google earth and overlaid Jefferson County JMaps to see where our tracks took us today. We are close to private property as we traveled north to approach this cache (which was evident while hiking because there is a house) and then we moved east to the rock formations. While we were heading north, I cannot remember if we were on trail or not but once we realized we were close to private property, we re-directed up the hillside towards the cache.

It looks like the the approach where the cacher met "Randy" was directly from the north of the cache from Bell Park Drive, which would require someone to cross private property then into EVPR & DMP property.

Thanks for placing the container in the park. This container has been here for quite some time, so hopefully with the new monstrosities being build in the gated community, there won't be trouble in the future. I think your cache description is quite clear on how to access the cache from several directions to avoid private property.

06/02/2018 By Knyte7
Marvelous spot with fantastic view. Large and well-stocked cache. Thanks for placing. K7

06/11/2017 By cubsfan4life07
Awesome views!

05/14/2017 By Wulff Pack
Out on a maintenance run with Denhamfam at the crystal stairs. replaced some things. Otherwise all is good.

03/25/2017 By MastaCache
Great find! Fun scramble