GC1Z11HRed Creek Fortress - Blue Mesa Reservoir Area
Type: Traditional
| Size: Regular
| Difficulty:
| Terrain:
By: Flutiste@
| Hide Date: 09/22/2009
| Status: Available
Country: United States
| State: Colorado Coordinates: N38° 30.321 W107° 14.080 | Last updated: 06/19/2022 | Fav points: 0
Are you feeling adventurous? This is a 1/3 mile MAJOR hike uphill at high elevation, but it feels more like a full mile. The terrain is rocky and rubbly. Not difficult to hike up, but NOT EASY coming down. It's steep, and the rubble is like ball bearings on the way down – very easy to slip and fall. It’s safer to zigzag than to go straight down. Wear good hiking shoes, and consider bringing hiking sticks. Elevation at cache is 8400'.Red Creek Road off of HWY 50 is a well-graded dirt car-road. This road is closed from March 1 until May 30.
About 1/2 mile up Red Creek Road is a State Wildlife Area sign which is very misleading. This sign is actually at the boundary between NPS land and BLM land, and the road does not enter the wildlife area for another 1 1/2 miles. The cache and the route to the cache are not on state wildlife land.
THE EASIEST AND SAFEST WAY TO THE CACHE IS NOT THE SHORTEST WAY! TAKE TIME TO LOOK AROUND BEFORE YOU PARK AND START HIKING. (For best route, see Hint #1.) You will be hiking up to some spectacular rock formations eroded out of layers of volcanic breccia and welded tuff. (Red Creek Fortress is not an official name.) It’s a veritable wonderland up there, and if you have enough energy left once you get there, you can spend the whole day hiking around and exploring. There are some interesting spring-fed bat-caves to the west of the Fortress, however, it's a difficult hike to get to them. Notice the poison-green lichens that grow on the Fortress wall – they look like polka dots. Have fun, and be careful on the way down!
This cache is one of several caches around Blue Mesa Reservoir. The cache is in a clear plastic box with a red rim.
***Hunting Season Advisory*** Hunting seasons in Colorado are in September and October. If you venture out during hunting season, be sure to wear some blaze orange and be noisy.
08/08/2016 By allenmabry 10:26:00 AM We are visiting from Dallas and staying in Salida this week. Today we drove to Montrose and picked up some counties and DeLorme grids along the way. And some candy at the Russell Stover factory outlet!
Well, when I was scouting for caches to fill certain DeLorme grids and counties, I noticed this one. At one point it was going to be my "backup" for grid 57, behind the "Laminar Flow" earthcache at the Dillon Tunnel. Further, it hasn't been logged online since 2013... three years ago! After reading the cache description, I decided that this was what geocaching was all about. I got permission from my wife and revised our sequence of attack. We made this our morning hike on the way to Montrose.
We are still acclimating to the altitude, and it took us longer than I had budgeted to get to the cache (and to get back down). We did take the advised route and that seemed judicious. My wife nicknamed this one "talk to the hand" and said not to explain it - let people discover it for themselves. We did also see a large "nose" on the formation nearby.
My wife truly is the "cache whisperer." She said that she was going to go over here while I looked for the cache. Well, I glanced to where she was indicating and, sure enough, there was the cache. Whew!
I signed the log below two separate lists of names from 2015, one was July 2015. Not sure why they didn't log a find online. In that respect, I'm the first to log it in 3 years. Thanks, flutiste, for placing this cache for me to find. This lit up DeLorme grid 57 for me. Nice challenging hike, great views. Happy to add a favorite point.
08/22/2013 By jetmack61 Took Black Cat tracking coin. This is going some distance. It's a big hill to climb but worth it.
08/09/2013 By elko dealers That was some climb, our legs said it should be a 10 Ter., by the time we got to the cache. But thanks for the great placement with all the views. SL TN LN T4TH
08/26/2012 By gjhiker Found easily after a stiff climb up the hill. T:bottle opener. L:Black Cat Geocoin SL. A great, but somewhat smokey, view. T4TC!
Red Creek Fortress - Blue Mesa Reservoir Area
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