Stone Cabin

03/20/2019 By OA Vigil Honor
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL LOCATION. The hike down was intense but well worth it. The creek was only ankle deep in parts. easy to cross. We could see how it would be deeper with more spring melt. The cache container is damaged and could be replaced. Maybe the next person down will take one with them. We traded out some items, and left a TB. Next was lunch next to the creek with some shade. And back up we went. Total hike was about 5.5 hours, but winter had taken its tole on our fitness levels. I will be back with more friends in the future. PS this one gets a favorite .

04/16/2017 By BG2015
Made an attempt today, got all the way to the eastern river bank but the water was quite swift and deep. Three feet off the bank, it was over my waist so I made no attempts at crossing. I will have to wait til the spring runoff subsides. No too bad of a hike out, looks worse than it actually is. Only bad thing is the long walk beer tag has to stay with me and still has not found a new cache home.

11/12/2016 By jake92
Cache container was in poor condition did not have another container so covered it the best I could.
Thanks for getting us to this cabin sight. Might have been a uranium miner.
Thanks

11/12/2016 By sjclimber
Well, thanks to KEKJ for setting up a decent route to this venue. The trip down was fun with more caches to find, vistas to view and wildlife about. Meager living quarters on site for sure. Wonder about the name and dates on the stone and how bored the person was pecking on a rock. Oh well. Great adventure and wonderful area. Many thanks/SJC..
Things haven't changed

Poor "digs"

Jake near cache

A look back to the canyon rim.

08/27/2016 By beth1957
Thank you for the cache:)Out with linecacher and rxgirl75 grabbing some caches:) What a hike but rxgirl encouragement helped this old lady go down and up and so glad I did:)

08/27/2016 By Linecacher
Out with Beth1957 and Rxgirl75. We have been looking at this one for over a year and a half, waiting for the right weather. Today was the right day. Now for the hike back to the truck. :-( We made it back to the truck with plenty of time to eat and get home in time to watch the Broncos. A good day. :-) TFTC SL :-)

08/27/2016 By rxgirl75
Great day to head out to stone cabin grabbed a couple other caches along the way. TFTC SL and replaced as found. Inside container is still in great condition.

04/11/2015 By crawfordcollins
HOLY COW!!!! I'm not sure how the original cache owner placed this one. It appears that A LOT has changed in 11 years since it was placed. Using Team kekj's new caches as a guide, we hiked down from the East rim of the canyon. I'd be interested to know how to get here a different way. If you come the same way we did, the terrain should be at least a 4.5 to 5 stars! We only had to cross the creek once and the water was about mid-shin on a human. It wasn't too swift but was taking on the hue of chocolate milk as spring runoff picks up. After crossing the creek, we made it to the cabin without any difficulties. I have SO MANY questions about this site!!!!! Is the writing on the rock intended as a corner stone or a headstone? Did the name on the rock live here year round? Did he settle the place and build a cow herd? How large was the cabin? When was it discovered? Ahhh, the list goes on and on. Anyway, the outer container is in pretty rough shape, but the inner container seems ok. Thanks to all the previous cachers for keeping up the maintenance on this one. TFTC!!!
Change of shoes

Lunch

Corner or Head Stone?

Creek Crossing

04/10/2015 By 3cacheteers
WOW! Awesome day caching! Like soldiergrrrl I almost had to abort my mission because of my Geo-dog! She just wouldn't drop over the first ledge and I wasn't about to force her. However, I couldn't stand it that there was another cache soooooooooooo close------so left her sitting on the ledge and went on down to the second cache site. As I was sitting there signing the log (and suprised to be FTF) guess who showed up? Yup, Geo-dog! I was't sure how I was going to get her back up but figured I didn't need to worry about that right now. At this point I went off to the left and down the mountain, thinking I had found an easier way to next cache. NOT!!! I ended up about four tenths of a mile from the cache and had to cross that open part of the mountain with that ugly shale and hard pack stuff, which had my heart rate pretty high!! Having survived that foolishness I was happy to find the next cache and another FTF. After another down down down the mountain I finally hit almost level ground and headed for the stream. Geo-dog LOVES water and she ran up and down the stream and even tried to send herself over some of the deeper rapids. you'd think she was rafting to watch her. We both ended up playing the the stream for a bit and I must say it was refreshing!! After signing the last log and eating I happened to glance up and almost gasped at the size of the mountain I had just come down. Had an "Oh $*&^ what have I done" moment but that passed quickly and I gathered up my stuff to head back. Boy wet shoes are heavy!! and as I went up the mountain they got heavier and heavier! Geo-dog is like a little homing pigeon so she headed up in front of me in almost in my same footsteps. Had to adjust for going up a different way but found all my major landmarks so was okay. The last bit I was gasping and it was tricky lifting geo-dog up two places she couldn't get up by herself but we made it in good shape. Top side I just laid down on a rock and stared at the sky till I could catch my breath, then I had to do a couple of WOO HOO's before heading back to the jeep. Thank you, Thank you for making this cache possible for me to do. I'd have never attempted it without the other caches leading me there! Would be interesting if the next geo-cacher could track the elevation drop from top to cache!!!!!!!

What's left of Stone Cabin

04/04/2015 By kekj
OH WOW! We feel a real sense of accomplishment in finding this cache without too much effort after a trek in of a LOT of effort but . . . . we still feel a bit bummed. . . . . The story goes like this.

We have been looking at this one for MONTHS as it has become the closest cache (in mileage, not drive/hike time) to our home GZ that we have not found. We originally scouted out the best route back in Nov ’14, first looking at the route given in the description of the cache. Much has changed since the cache was set including road names and that motorized vehicles of any kind are no longer allowed beyond the parking area described for that cache in the lower area of Roubideau Canyon so - you are either on a horse or a shanks mare for the entire distance over rugged terrain. We do not have horses and when asked, our shanks mares rebelled, primarily due to all the water crossings. The 4wheeler we had with us was of no value.

We talked with some local hunters there at the time and they described a location coming in from the East as the best and quickest way to get here along with very explicit directions coming onto public lands off of Banner Rd. THANKS GUYS! We came on out and checked the route from the East rim but by that time daylight was too short to make the hike down and back. We did note at the time that a number of cairns had been placed down the side of the escarpment. While on that scouting trip we placed IACG 39, 40 & 41 along both the road into the lower canyon and on the way out here via the East rim.

At the time of the original scout trip we also noted that the cache had not be logged in over 4 years! We had no idea of if the cache even still existed but were determined to make the effort and either find it or log it for archive. We get more satisfaction out of finding caches that have not been logged in years than we do with an FTF! As with this one, it usually has to do with the difficulty of getting to it with little guarantee of a find. We feel it puts us in an elite class of cachers by going after these lonely caches. We have nearly a dozen that have not been found in 2-3 yrs. but this would have set our record at 4+ of no logs. Exceeded 750 word log limit - continued below

04/04/2015 By kekj
Continued from above log

We were more than a little disappointed when Rojo464 and Pauleefox successfully made the find before we were able to make it back out but they certainly deserve KUDOS for their effort ! Based on their logs we were fairly certain that they used the same route we were planning and that was confirmed by finding their footprints in numerous places all along the marked route to the Stone Cabin. Knowing the cache was still viable also helped but took away the risk and the sweet feeling of accomplishment. It is almost like they were able to determine from the timing of the placement of the 3 IACG caches that we were investigating this cache?

Coords for cache were spot on and the Ms. made the find while I was still doing a general overview of the hide area. We came prepared to replace the cache if necessary but found the inner one and log in good condition. The outer/original? Cache is toast but left for posterity. Punched some holes in the bottom of the old outer cache so water could drain and not top over the inner cache and put the log inside a new double lock freezer bag. Cache has years of life left in it.

Plan on minimum of 3hrs in and out, bring water and either waders, or extra socks and shoes to wade the creek at bottom – 1 crossing only needed each way – water was running 12” x 20’ at this time of year but we are told that it can run several feet deep at times. I am a big guy and was able to cross on stepping stones with minimal water infiltration but the Ms. could make the long strides needed and got soaked mid calf but to find even that took us several tenths out of our way from straight line trek. We are both 60+ but someone younger and in excellent shape pushing it could probably do the trek in under 2 hrs.

While on the way out we placed three new caches at or very near the cairns that locals have built over the years to both make the trek more worthwhile AND to help in route planning to get to this Eastern access route. We DID go down the second escarpment via a different route than cairns in hopes of finding a better river crossing but that did not pan out, still got wet and wasted a lot of time and mileage so came back up the marked route, definitely the best way. TFTC SL visited bugs - this cache has never had a TB logged to it! These will be the first!