GCZ7QG Follow the (Geo)Tracks
Type: Multi | Size: Other | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: DES @ | Hide Date: 11/05/2006 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N40° 01.459 W105° 12.900 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 5
         

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A nice walk, or bike ride, all on paved paths east of Boulder. Or you could drive it. But this is Boulder, so bike it.

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The total distance from start back to start is 3.8 miles. All of it is on wide concrete paths. Lots of ducks and prairie dogs to watch. Kids might enjoy it. Cache is a mag nano, log only, no pen.

The given starting coords are a good place to park if you need to drive here. At this spot you will find a pole on the east side of the street with three rows of numbers.

Let A = the sum of the even digits in the first row: _______

Let B = the first digit in the second row: _______


The first waypoint (WP1) is at 40° 1.3A4' -105° 12.B81'

You can get to this waypoint by heading south from the pole and getting on the concrete path where the road curves to the east. Follow your GPS, but do not attempt a straight-line journey; stay on the path.

At the first waypoint (WP1), let C = the number of tracks crossing the path: _______

Let D = C – 5: _______

Let E = C – 8: _______

The second waypoint (WP2) is at 40° 1.D11' -105° 14.E97'

(WP2 is about 1 mile west of WP1, but the path takes a slightly longer route.)


At the second waypoint (WP2), let F = the number of mammal tracks crossing the path: _______

H = F + 91

J = (16 x F) + 2

Now for the fun part to test your GPSr expertise:

The micro cache location (WP3) is located north of a line connecting WP1 and WP2. WP3 is 0.(J-148) miles from WP1 and 0.J miles from WP2. WP1 is at a bearing of H° from the cache; WP2 is at a bearing of (J-541)° from the cache.

15,000 extra points if you know what the original purpose of the concrete structure near GZ.

WP1, WP2 and the cache (WP3) are all along paved bikepaths. No need to wander into the brush or walk/ride on or cross highways. Enjoy the ride/walk and I hope you discover some new paths.


Additional Waypoints

08/10/2018 By DES
Out biking around town this AM checking on my caches; this final is good.

07/27/2017 By jasperdakota
Thanks for the fun cache! My projection from WP2 gave me better coords to the final. SL.

12/30/2016 By SnailMan1
I found the 1st two WPs easy enough. I then made some calculations and made my projection from WP2. Once I arrived at WP3 the container did not jump out at me, so after a fairly long search I was beginning to wonder if I had done something wrong. It did seem like I was in the right area since there was a concrete structure nearby. I finally sat down and made a projection from WP1 and it put me in the same area so I restarted my search. Finally I spotted "ET". Thanks for the multi!

It seems to me that the Concrete Structure was simply a bridge use for cars at some point in the past.

11/05/2016 By DES
10th anniversary of cache placement.

08/10/2016 By DES
Made a slight mod to the calcs, GZ still at the same location.

08/01/2016 By jacobboulder
We biked to the first two stages a few days ago and had everything we needed, except the avian tracks. We came back multiple times and just couldn't find them. We messaged the CO who then checked on them to find that they were missing. He gave us the number of tracks that used to be there, so we could complete the multi. Played around in Google Earth until we got the bearings to the cache and distances to the cache correct. Came back today and quickly made the find with tracylhs. SL. TFTC!

Find #1837

08/01/2016 By tracylhs
After checking a couple more times unsuccessfully for bird tracks, CO checked himself and discovered that they were indeed gone! Glad to know I'm not blind or crazy! Whew! So, CO gave us the necessary number, and an additional hint, and we made the find today! Yay! Not sure what the nearby concrete structure was originally used for (flood control of some sort?). Another point of confusion for us was the number of mammal tracks "crossing the path." I read too much into this phrase and did not use the full number of tracks, so our calculations from WP1 and WP2 were not meeting up. We then tried using the full number of mammal tracks and came up with two lines converging on (roughly) the same spot, as it should be! So headed over, and armed with additional hint from CO for all our troubles, finally made the find without further ado! Thanks for the adventure, and TFTC!

07/29/2016 By DES
Needs some tweaking.

07/26/2016 By tracylhs
Spent some time unsuccessfully working on this cache today with jacobboulder. Found starting point, waypoint 1 and waypoint 2 without issue. However, we could not find avian tracks near waypoint 2. Jacob messaged CO and received a response just after arriving back home (of course!). The response has me alternately scratching my head and wanting to bang it against a brick wall, if I am understanding it correctly! Anyhow, we wandered around north of the line connecting waypoints 1&2 looking for unusual concrete structures. We found a likely candidate about 0.7 miles (along the bike path) from waypoint 1, which fits with it being 0.6g miles as the crow flies from waypoint 1. We also found something in line with the hint nearby. Knowing the cache is a mag nano, we gave a good search but came up empty-handed . We won't be able to try again until at least early next week. But I'm dying to check again for the avian tracks!!!

04/27/2016 By CoBiker
Quick find & stamp. TFTC