GC5DGNZ BEYOND Grand Veiw Cairn
Type: Traditional | Size: Small | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: kekj @ | Hide Date: 10/11/2014 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N39° 01.373 W108° 01.449 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0
         

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While researching Earthcaches in the area we walked to the point above this cache for the view and knew we had to encourage others to do the same! At the point you are looking over the south edge of Grand Mesa with the Gunnison River Valley far below you. Then comes Gunnision Gorge with the Uncompahgre Valley and Plateau next and the San Juan Mountains in the far distance.
Cache was formerly called Grand View Cairn - offset coords

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Park at the Land o' Lakes Outlook parking lot. A 25 minute (0.8 mi) walk out to the point over a slightly rocky poorly marked trail. Unless you are into serious bushwhacking, it is not possible to go directly to the cache. Look for the TALL orange poles as trail markers and include Hole-y-Rock cache as one of the way-marks ( or look for the Orange Diamonds up in the trees in that area) and continue Westward until you enter a "bowl" which is a snowmobile playground! From there you turn south and eventually enter a tree line at which time you can make a near beeline to the view point with only a few dead-falls to contend with. The cache is some 260' beyond down a steep rocky incline, thus the 3.5T. We had to do this to maintain distance from Split-Rock Cairn Cache - see below

UPDATED COORDINATES INFO: We plotted several of the caches along this course along with the Grand View Cairn endpoint several weeks in advance of our nearby - GC5DJ1E International Earthcache Day Event - Oct, 2014 - and then several days later decided to come back and set several other caches along the way, in part, to make the trail longer (for a 5k event souvenir) as well as more opportunity to make finds. While setting "Split-rock cairn" I neglected to check the distance back to the GRAND VIEW point. Once home I discovered that the spacing was too close so moved this cache on paper and published it planning to come to the event early the following day and move the physical cache to the new coords. A snowstorm stopped that but did not want to disable the cache as knew it would be the following year before it got moved to correct coords. GCHQ would be raising red flags by that time. For that reason we called it "Grand View - offset coords" and left it where it was up on the point at N39 01.385 W108 01.505 and published those coords in the description but people still understandably got confused. That has now been corrected,

Cache is a small round tin under a small cairn built in the lee of two larger rocks, not real obvious, but a SPOR none the less, obvious to most geocachers. About 10'-15' back from the SE point of rock near GZ.

Additional Waypoints

P15DGNZ - parking/trail head
N 39° 01.719 W 108° 01.309

W15DGNZ - Hole-y-Rock
N 39° 01.538 W 108° 01.522

W25DGNZ - Trail waypoint
N 39° 01.517 W 108° 01.678

W35DGNZ - GRAND VIEW CAIRN
N 39° 01.385 W 108° 01.505

09/26/2018 By BG2015
Just enough time for an after work hike today and a chill is in the air. Seemed like a round about way to the cache but orange poles kept me in line. Made it to boulder field and after a short stop in the wrong area, continued down to proper GZ and made quick work of this one. Be very cautious around here as there is a 6 foot hole near GZ ready to swallow up the inattentive. Thanks for the Grand View!

09/04/2017 By Lynnsdestiny1
TFTC if you gonna do one do them all thank you for getting us out of the car and moving husband went down alone to save the dog who does not make a good mountain goat

09/04/2017 By HD4
Not easy with a dog with bad knees with all the rock. Still got it tftc

09/05/2015 By kekj
Finally made it back out to move the cache to the correct location and update the coords to actual rather than "offset"

Coordinates changed from: N 39° 01.417 W 108° 01.467 - Distance from original: 280'

Changed description to fit, upped from 1.5Dx2T due to more difficult terrain

08/04/2015 By cb_beauty
TFTC! Out with SoldierGrrrl today. Oh dear. Mosquitoes had me rushing at this point to get finished with this area and we walked right past the cache before I read the description to learn that the coords needed to be re-entered. I was in a panic from the attack by hungry skeeters (I am scratching my skin off as I write this the next day) and had to pass the gps to SoldierGrrrl. As her moniker implies, she was able to soldier through the process while I ran for the hills. I was ready for a dnf, but SG's persistence brought me back to the cache and we were rewarded with the find.

This entry was edited by cb_beauty on Sunday, 09 August 2015 at 14:21:26 UTC.

08/04/2015 By SoldierGrrrl
TFTC, found with CB_Beauty while we were clearing caches in the area. Wow, wish we would have read the description before the attempt. We were in the posted coordinates area, getting eaten alive by the swarms of mosquitos, ready to quit, when I started to read. I cannot describe the misery trying to enter the correct coordinates while swatting skeeters from my eyes, my hands, the GPS screen, but alas, the coordinates in the description were spot on. Awesome view from the cache. CBB made the find as I was flipping the wrong rocks.

10/21/2014 By Pauleefox
Out with Rojo464 today. TFTC