2014-04-25 51 -115

Location

1 Km NE of Grotto Mountain Pond and 2 Km west of Exshaw, Alberta Canada

Participants

Guzzby

Plans

When I looked at eupeodes map this morning I saw it was possible to reach ground zero at two different graticules. I planned to leave at 10:00 am and drive to the farthest one first. I was going to park at the Grotto Lake parking lot then walk up Grotto Canyon trail. There is a geocache called "Love Grotto" and the geohash was located 90 meters ne of it. I was then going to continue another 700 meters up the trail and find 3 more geocaches. Next I was going to drive back to the city and go to the geohash in town.

Expedition

I left the house around 10:30 am. I was driving out on highway 1 and I missed the turnoff for Exshaw. I had to drive to Deadman's Flat before I could turn around and head back to Exshaw. When I got to the Grotto Lake parking lot it was around 12:00 noon. I started up the trail which parallels the road for 800 meters where it meets the creek and then continues along the creek. Eventually the trail joined with the creek and the rest of the trail continued up the creek bed. The flood here last year completely wiped out the trail and left a mess of rocks and trees behind. I approached the "Love Grotto" geocache and climbed up the side of the mountain to the cliff face and found it. I moved along the cliff face to the closest point I could get to the geohash, which was approximately 50 meters. I took a couple of pictures of the cliff and then climbed back down to the creek and continued up the creek bed. I found the "Grotto Canyon View" geocache about 300 meters up the creek bed. From here I continued another 150 meters and searched for the "Grotto Canyon Micro" geocache. Apparently it looks like the flood has removed the trees the geocache was hiding in. I continued another 130 meters up the creek bed and then searched the mountainside for the "Gotto Goto Grotto" geocache. My GPS was spinning all over the place. I searched for about 20 minutes before giving up. I then turned around and came back to the parking lot. Next I headed back to Calgary to find the geohash located in Cougar Ridge.