Pk-a-boo's Geocaching Adventures: Hiking and caching at Salmon Falls

Hope and I did a 5-mile hike along the Salmon Falls Trail yesterday morning. My original intent was to get another Snookered clue (that's the cache where I have to find the A, B, C caches then find the D cache which gives you one digit for the final cache), but after driving to Pilot Hill, it turns out the campground was closed for the season. Drats! I think a lot of these parks are closed because of the California budget cuts. I figured I would stop at Salmon Falls to hike instead and both of the Folsom SRA parking lots were closed too. Guess my State Parks pass is not as valuable now that I can hardly use it.

We did find a dirt parking lot off the trail (where I could use my pass). It was a nice leisurely hike, except full of mountain bikers so I was constantly moving over to let them pass as the trail was really narrow. I don't think I'll hike this trail anymore because of that. Oh well, it was good to go on another trail and I picked up four caches along the way.

I tried to find some spots for Hope to swim, but the river was nowhere to be found in many of the areas or not very easy to get to without wading through lots of grass/stickers. Not that either of would have minded, but I was more worried about her picking up ticks more than anything.

Here's a few pictures of Hope that I took. Since there is very little water now, the Magic Bridge is really visible in the background. We probably hiked another 1/2 mile from where this picture was taken and then turned around. (You might have to click on the picture to see the Bridge in the background).

Here is a spot near where we got one cache, as you can see, no river for Hope to swim in here. She was disappointed!

This is a picture I took from one of the caches I found, the last 100 feet or so was trudging up a steep hill towards a huge boulder where an ammo can was hidden. It had a Terrain 3 level of difficulty, well deserved. As you can see in the picture, there was hardly a trail leading up to the cache, halfway up the hill, I just told Hope to wait for me. I'm glad I got this now as after it rains, it will be dangerous as it was so steep and slippery, plus the cache was in a bunch of rocks, not good when it's snake season!