ATV'ing the great trails in the Grand Mesa will bring you over these wonderful remote areas. Having read that many wish for more along these trails, we tried to hide more but ran into a huge monsoon storm on trails all afternoon with huge hail and imminent thunder and lightening so had to fight the mud bogs and get drenched to the soul and couldn't hide as many as planned. Were able to hide three along the trails...went home covered in mud and shivering for hours!

Great trail #730 adopted by the Delta Thunder Mountain Wheelers. Can be reached either coming south from Vega Lake on the main trail 127 or coming north about 12 miles on trail 127 from Cedaredge at the corral parking area at the end of the Surface Creek Rd/Ute Trail where the boundary of the Grand Mesa National Forest begins. Regular rectangle tin full of swag along the trail.

07/22/2018 By BG2015
Found this one just as the forest broke out into a huge picturesque park. Nice ATV ride with the daughter today, headed for some fishing. Thanks.

09/06/2015 By drames
UP wheeling for the day and wanted to find at least a couple caches! Looked for a little bit for this one then the wife spotted it right where I had been standing!!!! Left a TB....we'll see how long it stays there!

11/09/2014 By kekj
(Log is wk late) Made a trip out this direction several months ago (Sept 1) on a 4wheeler planning to get this cache along with 4-5 others immediately south of here. DNFed this one and ended up spending so much time looking for this and several others(especially “Columbine is close enough” - see that DNF log) that we ran out of time and low on fuel so had to skip Monument trail (by 1/2 mile! OUCH!) at the time and ended up ridding back to the Surface Creek Corral on an unknown trail (4x4 rd) totally in the dark! It was a wild ride!

We have been in the process of logging every single cache in Grand Mesa National Forest (excepting 1 in the far NE - some 80+ caches) and as of yesterday had done so except for this one and 3 others that we DNFed on that ill fated trip of 9-1. We have been looking for a date when we would have a FULL day ahead of us for the second time out and with weather closing in decided today was a "do or die trying" time to do it. WE ALMOST DIED TRYING!

Other than these 4, having yesterday logged the last cache within the National Forest boundary (Green Mountain - Trail 719), took off early from home GZ, and headed toward Monument Trail cache after having found the 1st stage of "Close isn't Goodenough" and this one, both DNFed on previous trip. After finding Monument Trail cache fairly easy, even with 4-6" of snow around, and now pushed for time to get second stage of Goodenough and hoping to make a second run at "Columbine is Close Enough" was pushing the Yamaha Grizzly pretty hard trying to make it from Monument Trail to the South end Trail head in 45 minutes. Pushed it TOO hard and popped a tire off the rim with 5.2 miles to go, now 2:15 p.m., spent some time trying to remount tire but could not get it to seal to rim and hold air.

We were prepared to walk out the 5 miles but fortunately (having previously met them on the trail) we knew some other 4 wheelers were behind us and hoped they would be along shortly. Ken & Cassandra (of Cedaredge Tire) came along about 3 and with some additional tools they had we spent more time trying to mount tire with no luck. They then hauled us out (THANKS GUYS!) and we made it back to home GZ shortly after dark.

BUT . . . . . Now we have a (borrowed from Kirk Huff - Excavating) 4 wheeler WAY out in the middle of nowhere, snow storms brewing, and caches yet unfound! Kirk and I arranged our schedules to come out on Tuesday (11-11) to recover the rig AND the caches, planning to leave around 1 p.m. At the last minute he got a call that one of his trucks was broke down along the road and I got a 30 minute notice of a special inspection coming up on my job site here in Delta - which we had been waiting for for over a week - a must do inspection! We finially got out of town at 3 pm. TH at 4:25, abandoned rig at 5.03, back on the trail at 5:15 and made it back to the Goodenough Trail at 5:52, in the dark, having picked up two caches for Kirk along the way back!

NOW, a decision! Well after dark, half mile to vehicle, or 2 miles to Goodenough 2nd stage cache which had not been found in OVER THREE YEARS! and 6"+ snow on the ground! As a geocacher, what decision would you have made? OF COURSE! GO FOR IT! We did, (20 minutes to go 2 miles bucking snow) we found it (30 minutes - very tough find - see log) and made it home about 8:30!

This one had us buffaloed last time out, contacted CO who, having set it in a hail storm, could not recall much in the way of specifics but did have one detail that helped us figure it out. WOW! It was a doozy of a hide and with snow on top of everything? We scraped snow off a 100' or more of downed trees and literally tore the one most likely log apart looking for it and had all but given up when I decided to make one last sweep in a different area. NICE HIDE! Gets our FAV! Even in the summer with no snow this will be difficult to pick it out from the natura! TFTC SL Visited bugs Gave FAV

09/01/2014 By kekj
OUCH !!!!!! This DNF probably hurt us more than any DNF we have ever made! WHY? Because NOW we have to go BACK and FIND IT! WHY? This is WAY off the beaten track and takes hours to get to from civilization, not matter WHICH route you take (except maybe by helicopter!) Read on!

After spending nearly 2 hrs 4 wheeling East across Green Mnt Trail, we grabbed FTF on Silverheels "Bailey Bond" then went searching for "Close isn’t goodenough" & " Columbine is close enough" and between them spent 3 hours (mostly on just GETTING TO Columbine GZ - see logs) and ended up being all but certain they are MIA. We were not totally surprised as those caches had not been logged in over 3 years BUT we have found several other caches up here on Grand Mesa that had not been found in almost as long - Lost my Cache & Indian Point Trail - being among them. We WERE Very disappointed not to find them as we have made it a goal to log EVERY cache on the Western half of Grand Mesa (we have done that excepting one) and as many of those on the Central and South Eastern portion that we have time for before snows hit, including Leon Peak!

We are even MORE disappointed not to find this one as it MUST BE THERE and is by FAR the mostest furthestest outest from any major accessible Trail head of any cache on the mesa, and WE GOTA GO BACK!

For the day we set 4 caches, found 2, 1 DNF, 2 MIA, 4 wheeled 51 miles on Green Mnt Trail > East Leon trail hitting the North end at dusk and going back south to the Surface Creek Coral on the 4x4 road TOTALLY IN THE DARK arriving there at 10:25 p.m.! CRAZY US! but we had a blast! mud from head to toe, tired beyond belief, ached from top to bottom and first time ever for the Ms. on a 4wheeler, 2nd time only for me! Saw some of the finest back-country that God and nature have to provided and probably missed a ton more in the dark.

The two MIA's set us way back but when you are this far out you can't skip a cache, even if you know heading in that it is probably missing! SOMEone has to look and declare it! That someone is US. In all probability (at least in the case of "Close is not goodenough" as it is easily accessible) it has been DNFed multiple times but people do not want to log it as such, so do nothing - leaving both the CO and the next hunter in the dark. LOG YOUR DNF! Nuff said about our personal crusade!

08/30/2014 By WeBeNCB
Woo Hoo FTF. 12 mile rough and muddy ride from Vega. SL TFTC. Love this back country. Saw one bull elk.