In the words of the Cache Owner himself, “A Local Classic”.  You have to love a Geocache page

View of the Top of Cheyenne Mountain’s Heart

where the description starts off  “Warning: There have been two reported bear sightings by cachers looking for this cache!”

As most Geocachers, Stacie and I attempt to put a smiley face next to every cache in our immediate vicinity.  When we lived in Colorado Springs, CO this wasn’t an easy task since we lived at the foothills of Cheyenne Mountain.  This mountain sounds familiar, you say?  Why yes, it is the one and the same piece of land where the famous NORAD nuclear bunker from the movie Computer Games is located. The key word in all that is mountain.  Caches placed near our home were on a mountain.  People talk about Denver being the Mile High City.  We lived 1,000 feet higher than Denver!

So I talked Stacie into hiking in rough terrain about a week after she limped down the switch-backs of Barr Trail (Barr Trail goes up Pike’s Peak) with badly torn ligaments in her ankle (I know…Bad Husband, but she had a splint!).  We found a few caches after a tough but doable trek through the side of Cheyenne Mountain.  The following is pasted from our DNF log on July 11, 2009.

“We don’t recommend attempting Cheyenne Mountain’s Heart from Sleepy Hollow unless you have climbing gear (which we didn’t). As the crow flies, it takes you up a couple hundred feet of sheer rock. Good thing S and I are in decent shape or it could have been really bad. We are still nursing scrapes and bruises from the bare handed rock climb. We popped up on the outcropping just south of the cache. After our descent we were planning our next rock climb about 237 feet from the cache (deep in the ravine on the south side) when we had to start out of the woods due to a thunderstorm threatening to make blackened cajuns out of us (yep, originally from Louisiana). Weird note: found 5 golf balls while trekking through the deep woods (two on the rock climb ascent!) More of a did not get to attempt rather than did not find I guess. We will return and use the more conventional path!”

Rich’s View from Cheyenne Mountain’s Heart

We made another failed attempt a little over a YEAR  later.  I then emailed the Cache Owner.  He responded quickly and just plainly offered to meet us up there and to show us the cache.

Here is our (FINALLY) Found it log:  “Thank you Rich for the guided tour! We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to your amazing cache. Approaching from Old Stage road is the way to do it. The views from this cache are the best in Colorado Springs bar none. This is a MUST DO cache !!!! We signed the log, told some stories (S and I needed a rest but Rich was like a mountain goat and could have climbed for hours!!!), maintained the hide with the owner and had a wonderful time. It would be quite the understatement if I said thanks for the cache, so I will say thanks for the experience!.”

While we were on the mountain Rich warned us that there were a few places with “exposure“.  Wikipedia defines “exposure”, as related to mountain climbing, as follows:  “Empty space BELOW a climber, usually referring to a great distance a climber is above the ground or large ledge, or the psychological sense of this distance due to being unprotected, or because the rock angles away due to climbing an arete or overhang.”

By the way, Cheyenne Mountain’s Heart is rated 2.5 difficulty and 4 star terrain.  One of the best caching experiences!  (I think Stacie has forgotten all of this, so I’m not going to let her read this)