San Luis Peak

San Luis Peak (10,433 feet) is located to the south of Old Stage Road to the east of Penrose-Rosemont Reservoir. It offers fantastic 360-degree views from the summit.

There are two ways to get there.

Call Bear Trap Ranch at 632-0740 for permission to park in their parking lot and use their trailhead to climb San Luis Peak and Mt. Vigil. The signed turnoff for Bear Trap Ranch off Old Stage Road is 38 44.369 104 54.915.

The trail starts at the bottom of their facility up some timber stairs behind a log lodge. The trail forks at 38 43.820 104 55.351. The south fork goes to Mt. Vigil. The west fork goes to San Luis. As you approach the San Luis Peak, follow the trail and the cairns carefully. A key waypoint where the trail crosses the rocks is 38 43.559 104 55.944. Enjoy the view!

A second way to access the peak is to come from the west from McKinley Peak. See the McKinley Peak geocache face sheet for details.

There is also a trail along the stream to the north at the bottom along Old Stage Road that generally connects the starting point for Knights Peak cache and Bear Trap Ranch. You may be able to use this if you plan to make a loop hike.

This cache is also one of a series of five caches (GC1FWA2, GC1FWAH, GC1FWAZ, GC1FWBB, GC1FWC9) all in the same area that contains a necessary clue-sheet to solve Crypto Cache # 10 – ENIGMA (GC1G01E). The following information relates only to Crypto Cache # 10 – ENIGMA and is not necessary or related to finding this cache.

SCRAMBLERS (PART 2)
(continued from Knights Peak cache face sheet)

After leaving the first scrambler the intermediary cipher letter enters the second scrambler. The second scrambler also has its own unique internal wiring pattern such that a letter entering in one of its twenty-six positions would emerge at yet another different position, e.g. our Q would emerge from the first scrambler and enters the second scrambler and, let’s say, now emerge as K.

The second scrambler, unlike the first position scrambler, however only rotated after twenty-six letters had been entered on the first scrambler. Think of it like a mechanical stopwatch; after twenty-six rotations of the first scrambler, the second scrambler rotates one position. After another twenty-six rotations of the first scrambler, the second scrambler rotates another one position. Somewhat similarly, the third scrambler rotates one position but only after the second scrambler rotates twenty-six positions.

The point at which the scramblers rotate, i.e. where exactly a scrambler was on its sequence to rotate, depends on its starting position. For example, depending on the starting position of the second scrambler (determined by the daily keycode), the second scrambler might rotate after only one letter was entered on the first scrambler or any other number of letters up to twenty-six may need to be entered before it rotated.

To somewhat simplify the operation of your Enigma machine for this cache, two components of the real scramblers (the core and the alphabet ring that rotated in relationship to the core) have been combined, and the process of “double-stepping” is eliminated.