Lava Mama

Our 2nd Geocaching Adventure

March 14, 2004

Lava Mama
N 38° 07.775 W 120° 05.805

My mom told me about the view from this area, so I just had to place a cache here. I placed it on Mothers Day after taking her to breakfast, thus the "Mama" reference. You'll figure out the "Lava" reference when you look around at this location. Hope you enjoy the view.

click here to link to the geocache website

This was a great cache! Not only did we find it - our first successful hunt - but the views were extraordinary and the weather was perfect. It was a little bit of a hike, had to cross a stream, go through a some snow, walk though very muddy patches, and loose lava rocks -I managed to fall a few times and have battle wounds as proof. Before we left, we already knew that the location was about 1/3 of a mile off the highway, so I figured it was an easy hike and instead of wearing hiking boots, stupidly decided that my worn out tennis shoes with no traction would suffice. Dumb dumb dumb. Sigh. With all of the switchbacking, it ended up being a little over a mile, round trip.

En route to the booty

The view as we reached the crest of the mountain

Amazing Lava Bed

Try hiking down these loose rocks with worn out tennies.

The coordinates point to one of those boulders.

Not at this big one, though.

Hum...that patted down soil looks suspicious.

(turned out someone earlier that day had been there, too)

Found it!!

After we signed the log sheet, we took a Russian lapel pen and left a mini pez dispenser w/ Sonny, the Coco-Puffs bird on it.

The south view from the cache.

Is that a petroglyph or is he just happy that we found the cache?

On the way back to the car after our 1st successful geocache!

Satellite photograph of our hike to Lava Mama.

Our Log:

March 14 by jretz (1 found)
Our first find! We live a few miles away and had no idea such a great view was there. We took a Russian lapel pin and left a mini Pez dispenser. There were still a few patches of snow and there were some muddy pathes from the melting snow. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon - about 60 degrees.

On April 17th, we returned to find the chalice that other geocachers had talked about in their logs. After we found it, we realized how much easier the hike would have been if we found it the first time! Jimmy asked Ron about the fountains and he said that there were half a dozen or so of them built in the Stanislaus National Forest.

The Chalice

Looking back towards the road

If we had only parked here the last time!!

Taking the Lexus off-roading - just a little.