GC7DF10 Delaney Butte Cache: A Tribute to Ward!
Type: Traditional | Size: Small | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: Denali41 @ | Hide Date: 10/08/2017 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N40° 42.094 W106° 29.214 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0
           

---

My puppy Orizaba and I have been staying with a wonderful muggle friend at his cabin near Gould. After about 20 years of applying for a moose permit, Ward was finally successful in the 2017 application period. So for the past week he’s been trying to encounter a moose. In contrast, for the past couple of days I’ve been focused in a different direction, enjoying some cache-finding and cache hiding with Zaba. When Ward learned that today I planned to climb to the summit of Delaney Butte he immediately put his moose quest on the back burner so he could accompany us. You see, over the 40+ year span that he’s owned the cabin in North Park Ward has fished South, East, and North Delaney Lakes hundreds of times, catching some awesome trout on dry flies (we ate a couple of them last night!). Over all of these years he’s looked up at the remarkable Delaney Butte soaring over his favorite fishing lakes, vowing that eventually he would get to the top of the butte. Today Ward, Zaba, and I did just that, making a really memorable loop hike that traversed this entire picturesque mountain.

Aha! The entire experience was so marvelous that I decided to hide a geocache near the summit! My initial thought was to make this a difficult puzzle cache or a really tough multi-cache. I collected waypoints and other information that could be used for either of these cache-type alternatives. But on further reflection, it became obvious to me that a traditional cache near the summit of Delaney Butte would in and of itself be a considerable challenge for anyone--without need for further "enhancing" the difficulty. Indeed, that was a good conclusion. So a Traditional is what you get. It's a tribute to Ward for the hundreds of times he's fished the nearby Delaney Lakes while simultaneously admiring the spectacular Butte. He genuinely enjoyed the scramble to the summit today. You enjoy it, too, as you go for the cache!!

Additional Waypoints

P07DF10 - Parking
N 40° 41.465 W 106° 28.690
Park here

05/31/2018 By HikingSeal
{FTF}!!![. 8:33 am

I'm on my way home after driving to GeoWoodstock in Cincinnati. I drove so I would be able to county cache. Originally Jackson county was to be my first county of the trip. When I needed to get somewhere a little faster it got shifted to last. The cache with the most favorite points in the county is in downtown Walden.

I got outside Walden at about 10 pm. Since I didn't want to disturb the locals while getting what looked like a front yard cache I just called it a day and set up camp outside of town. Before I went to sleep I checked my phone looking at other caches in the area. I was surprised to see an FTF banner not too far away. It looked like an easy hike. Summit Post didn't have any information about the route but it didn't look too bad. I had all my hiking gear with me so why not.

Thanks to the waypoint I found the parking and trailhead easily and started down the double track. I had my GPS with me but did not have the 24k maps for Colorado loaded, only the built in 100k. In looking at the topography and the trails I could see on my offline phone maps, I imagined the the double track would become a single track around the saddle then go up the butte on the west side. Guess those cliffs are right at 100 ft because they sure didn't show up on the topo. Time for some talus scrambling.

I touched the first rock and stopped to put my climbing gloves on. Rocks are cold before the sun reaches them. It was not a bad scramble at all to the top. It was pretty stable. There weren't too many loose rocks.

Once on top it took about five minutes of poking in little rock caves before coming up with the cache.

County caching is fun. It's great to see the map change colors and to see different types of caches across the country. But there is still nothing more satisfying then hiking to a high point with a beautiful view and poking around in the rocks for a cache. Thanks for helping me bring my trip to a very satisfying close!

PS Hope your friend bagged his moose

10/15/2017 By BlueRajah
Published