Trail Meetings

The first time I met someone on the trail while geocaching was the second time I ever went geocaching.  I actually think that's pretty significant since there weren't that many geocachers out there.  But, on the other hand, there weren't that many geocaches either, so those of us who were into this hobby back then, were all out going for the same caches on good weekends.  I met Stantastic and Seldom Seen John along a trail in the Chino Hills State park south of where we live.  All of us were going after San Juan Hill.  Both are still active in Geocaching, although at different levels of activity.

This past weekend, while hiking out in the desert, Chaosmanor and I came across four other hikers doing the same Groundspeak Series.  All of these cachers were from my local area (Chaosmanor lives about 60+ miles away from me) and I hadn't met any of them face to face, but had seen their names in logs and had communicated with one of them by email and on the phone several times over the past couple of months.

When we got to the first cache we were attempting to find on the second day, I noticed right away when we opened the log book the RangerG/76, Larry the Pool Guy, Guns and Cockpits, and Maddmaxxawr were somewhere out on the trail.  I had Maddmaxxawr's number in my phone so I called him to figure out where he was.  And of course, they were on the opposite side of the G+ from where we were.  I figured that we might bump into them, since our plan for this day was to drive to some.  By the third cache, our paths crossed for the first of four times.  We discovered each other's personal bugs and coins, shot the breeze a little bit and then parted ways.  It was nice to finally put faces to the names I kept seeing in logs.

We ended up crossing paths on Saturday three or four times, with the last time when we all ended up at the mystery cache for the series.  This was pure serendipity, because the two groups had decided to do different things.  They were hiking the entire series, then planning on hiking up to the top of Lookout Mountain to get the bonus cache up there, while we were driving to many of the ones that we had left.  It should be noted that I use driving loosely, since we ended up doing short hikes into the desert at most of the caches and our last hike was several miles in length due to the worsening condition of the roads and our lack of a high clearance vehicle.  Still, it was pure luck that we ended up at the same cache later on.

It was also nice to find other people in my local area who enjoy hiking.  If I plan to go on a hike, I can probably get in contact with any of them and they'd probably go along, if for nothing else, just the enjoyment of company and the hike.  My trail meetings are usually the way I meet other cachers.  I don't go to many event caches for basically unknown reasons.  Every event I've been to, I've met nice people.  I just don't go to many events.  So to meet local cachers that far a distance from home was a nice surprise.

Pictures were taken at or near the following cache:
Groundspeak Series - by HDGC