Getting a Little Bald Today!

On the date of the Winter Solstice in 2011 I hid and submitted “Getting Bald on the Solstice” (GC3AQHP). It’s been found only three times, and involves a marvelous hike and gets geocachers to a location having remarkable views. It’s hidden on Bald Mountain, just north of Rocky Mountain National Park, and it’s a tough climb.

Today I got just a little bald–Little Bald Mountain, that is. It’s hidden on a mountain that rises above Pearl Beaver Road, north of Deadman Lookout Tower. Little Bald isn’t much of a peak, as mountains go, because it has a prominence of only 169 feet. But getting to its top from the road can take quite an effort. From where we parked, my puppies and I and two friends hiked about 3 ½ miles round trip and ascended about 1,000 feet of elevation to reach its summit. Its “bald” top isn’t very bald at all–more like a crew cut of short hair (low trees) than an open baldness like the back of my head–so even with its elevation of 10,429 feet it doesn’t provide much in terms of views. But its still a neat destination. Climbers tend to ignore the peak, in part because it doesn’t have a prominence of at least 300 feet, so it isn’t “ranked”. In fact, through the years only five climbers have recorded summiting this peak on ListsofJohn. The last log was 4 or 5 years ago. So if you get inspired to chase down this remote geocache, it’s highly unlikely you will encounter crowds! A decent road system gets you fairly close to the cache, but both the Deadman Road and the Pearl Beaver Road are closed to traffic from December through mid-June. Snow mobiles are allowed on the roadways, however, so even a winter attempt is possible but inadvisable because of remoteness.

Once you arrive in the summit vicinity the cache is easy to find. It’s a pint-sized container wrapped in black tape placed at the base of a multi-trunk limber pine tree, about 20 feet from the top of the rock cairn on the highest point. When facing this tree from the cairn, the cache is on the tree’s right side, between the tree and nearby rocks. It’s covered with sticks. Please replace them carefully so the cache remains concealed. The Terrain rating of 4.0 is somewhat influenced by the driving distance.

Have fun getting to a rarely visited location!!