It was our first cache in a while and while it was exciting to try and find one that was both near our homestead and in the beautiful Rothrock State Forest near central PA, I was slightly hindered by the fact that there seemed to be no possible trails leading to it. Since I normally fail at reading the description and just want to get to the juicy part (the cache!) I missed the right of way there. Instead I looked at an old map of mine and took the most undesirable path to the the stash. A steeply inclined path leading strait up the slightly exposed side of the mountain.

Unaware as I drove I arrived at the parking lot which was quite full, obviously because it was a Saturday football weekend. I walked along a pavement path, bordering the water reservoir. I made an immediate right onto a thick tree that had fallen over the small creek (picture). I knew this was a path, since blue blazes were on the trees surrounding. For on tenth of a mile I followed the pristine creek, before jumping left onto a dried up creekbed. It was on my map so I wasn't being stupid, or so I thought. Then there it was, the demon trail.

It loomed over us like those two hippies sitting right next to it. God only knows what they were smoking. Within seconds I had lost the trail and I scrambled through the rhodedendron. The ground was moist and the blazes disappeared. I was on hands and knees with only one direction in mind: up. For about ten minutes I was surrounded. I know it dosn't sound long, but It showed me what I would develop. I finally advanced through the foliage to be greeted with a view 100 feet above the forest floor. The only thing that separated me from it was a few feet and a sheer drop. Blazes reappeared, I stubbornly followed them. Yet even as I went up the trail, it did not back away and the view just became higher and higher. It turned from a sheer drop to a bunch of sheer drops with little flat areas in between. Ouch, that would hurt. In the final climax the trail turned near vertical over 225 feet above the trees. One missed step and I was a goner. I then took a look at my GPS at what I would call the pinnacle. One huge rock jutting 30 feet out of the mountain. Another half mile to the cache. That half mile was pretty uneventful as I walked the ridge with views into the valley. After finding the cache I realized that it's not the cache, it's the places you visit, that make the fun.

By anonymous