astrodav
03-21-2010, 12:57 AM
The Nevada Geocachers Association has developed a power-trail, which curiously is in California. Here it is: (I apologize for possibly making you scroll, if you aren't set up with dual side-by-side, 25" Wide-Screen monitors. I couldn't really scrunch it down any more without making it hard to read.)
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/1720/draft22.png
Notice the tiny distance-bar at upper-right. That's a 2-mile bar. This trail is 50 miles+/- from end-to-end. There is a road underneath all those icons, with 1 transmission line on one side, & 2 of them on the other. The caches are set an average of about 1250 feet apart on each of the outside power-lines. Those lines are about 550 feet apart, & there is almost always a cooresponding cache directly opposite of all the rest. Basically, you have 2 complete trails, 550 feet apart.
There are a total of approx. 525 caches in this 50 miles, or about 7% of the total amount in the entire state of Arkansas. Around 1 out of every 15 caches in our state would fit on this single trail.
Evidently no one has ever done it in one day, since the current record of about 450 is being claimed by a group which cached in Colorado. I'm not sure 1 person COULD do it in a day. Four people probaly could, by starting at the 4 opposite corners & working inward. I don't know if that would be fun or not, probaly closer to self-inflicted punishment, but I sure would like to try it once .... but most likely ONLY once. This could never be done in Arkansas, since our power-trails were restricted with an extra guideline almost the same month they were made legal.
I can't even really figure out what the best way to work a trail like this would be. The way it's set up, they aren't along-side only 1 road .... most aren't even on the main road at all. Each of the transmission towers has an access road which leaves the main road at usually something close to a 90 degree angle. So to DRIVE these caches would require going down the road about 500 feet, then 250 feet down a trail, find the cache, back to the road, go another 500 feet, down another 250 feet trail .... all the way to the end.
Sounds like a good way to torture a vehicle out in the desert. They highly recommend a 4WD, high clearence vehicle, so evidently they planned on people driving it. But for someone in good shape, I'm not sure if it wouldn't be quicker just to walk out about 2 miles on one side (8-10 caches), then cross over to the one 550 feet away & back to your rig. Another way, as long as you had someone to pick you up, would be to work it in a zig-zag fashion .... find a cache, cross over 550 feet to the next, then 1,250 feet down the line to that one, cross over to the opposite one, rinse & repeat. If you did the entire trail by that method, you'd gain about 1,600 feet every mile of trail, because of the cross-overs. So you'd wind up walking around 65-70 miles to complete the entire 50 mile trail.
Sounds like fun. Anyone want to put together an official Arkansas Geocachers Tackle-The-California-Trail Group? I'm in. :lol: 8)
P.S. This was almost surely a group effort, since the owner of all of them is the NGA, which has 636 hides, but only 2 finds. :P They have at least 3 more much smaller trails in the immediate vicinity, one of which is visible on this map. Another one is almost an extension of this big trail, starting about 2 miles off-map at upper-right. A person could very easily pick up 1,000 caches here, within an area of about 50 X 75 miles, within just a week or two .... and only drive down about 5 roads.
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/1720/draft22.png
Notice the tiny distance-bar at upper-right. That's a 2-mile bar. This trail is 50 miles+/- from end-to-end. There is a road underneath all those icons, with 1 transmission line on one side, & 2 of them on the other. The caches are set an average of about 1250 feet apart on each of the outside power-lines. Those lines are about 550 feet apart, & there is almost always a cooresponding cache directly opposite of all the rest. Basically, you have 2 complete trails, 550 feet apart.
There are a total of approx. 525 caches in this 50 miles, or about 7% of the total amount in the entire state of Arkansas. Around 1 out of every 15 caches in our state would fit on this single trail.
Evidently no one has ever done it in one day, since the current record of about 450 is being claimed by a group which cached in Colorado. I'm not sure 1 person COULD do it in a day. Four people probaly could, by starting at the 4 opposite corners & working inward. I don't know if that would be fun or not, probaly closer to self-inflicted punishment, but I sure would like to try it once .... but most likely ONLY once. This could never be done in Arkansas, since our power-trails were restricted with an extra guideline almost the same month they were made legal.
I can't even really figure out what the best way to work a trail like this would be. The way it's set up, they aren't along-side only 1 road .... most aren't even on the main road at all. Each of the transmission towers has an access road which leaves the main road at usually something close to a 90 degree angle. So to DRIVE these caches would require going down the road about 500 feet, then 250 feet down a trail, find the cache, back to the road, go another 500 feet, down another 250 feet trail .... all the way to the end.
Sounds like a good way to torture a vehicle out in the desert. They highly recommend a 4WD, high clearence vehicle, so evidently they planned on people driving it. But for someone in good shape, I'm not sure if it wouldn't be quicker just to walk out about 2 miles on one side (8-10 caches), then cross over to the one 550 feet away & back to your rig. Another way, as long as you had someone to pick you up, would be to work it in a zig-zag fashion .... find a cache, cross over 550 feet to the next, then 1,250 feet down the line to that one, cross over to the opposite one, rinse & repeat. If you did the entire trail by that method, you'd gain about 1,600 feet every mile of trail, because of the cross-overs. So you'd wind up walking around 65-70 miles to complete the entire 50 mile trail.
Sounds like fun. Anyone want to put together an official Arkansas Geocachers Tackle-The-California-Trail Group? I'm in. :lol: 8)
P.S. This was almost surely a group effort, since the owner of all of them is the NGA, which has 636 hides, but only 2 finds. :P They have at least 3 more much smaller trails in the immediate vicinity, one of which is visible on this map. Another one is almost an extension of this big trail, starting about 2 miles off-map at upper-right. A person could very easily pick up 1,000 caches here, within an area of about 50 X 75 miles, within just a week or two .... and only drive down about 5 roads.