I had a great time at the Potter’s Ponds geocaching campout this year, despite (or perhaps because of) the low turnout. It was a relaxing trip, and for once I didn’t feel like I needed time to recover from my vacation before returning to work. 🙂 I had Friday off work, and my family and I left Price late Friday morning and arrived at campsite #5 at Potter’s Ponds early in the afternoon. As soon as we got camp set up, I hopped on my ATV and rode up to Skyline Drive because I’d heard it was closed by a landslide just south of where the Potter’s Canyon road tops out. Sure enough, there was a “Road Closed” sign and a small laminated paper warning of a fine for ignoring the closure, so I didn’t venture south to check out the landslide. That put a damper on my plans to hike North and South Tent Mountains the following day, which would now have required at least 40 miles of detouring to get to the trailhead.
Back at camp people were beginning to show up, and by nightfall there was a group of close friends staying at my campsite, and a few others at nearby sites. We sat around the campfire and had a few drinks, then a few of us hopped in Jeremy’s truck and drove to a few geocaches. I had been taking some night shots and at some point I dropped my camera and got a big scratch on the lens, which I didn’t notice until the next day. A few of us froze our tails off in the back of Jeremy’s truck, but we had fun wandering through the trees in the dark and trying to find Jeremy’s keys at one of our stops.
On Saturday we hiked the Left Fork of Huntington Creek Trail. It was a little longer than the North/South Tent Mountain hike I’d planned, but there was an actual trail and less elevation gain, so it was easier overall. Michael and Bradley came with me while Torrey stayed at camp with Traci because her foot still hadn’t healed. Chris, Kim, Jeremy, and an older gentleman from Fountain Green also went on the hike. We found three geocaches along the trail, the first of which was near a nice waterfall in Miller Flat Creek. We took a break at the last cache, then turned around and hiked back up the trail to our vehicles. The hike was about 6.5 miles and took us three hours to complete. We returned to camp and had a very nice potluck dinner with several others who had arrived during the day, then had a quiet night around the campfire.
It rained a bit during the night, which is probably why fewer people camped Saturday night than Friday. Sunday morning things were a little damp, and we had a few light showers. I hiked up to the old sawmill at the top of Fly Canyon with Chris, Terry, and Kim, and we got rained on, but it was a fun hike. We dodged mud holes while riding ATVs on the Lowry Water Road heading south from camp and parked under some pine trees at the Fly Canyon trailhead. The “trail” is actually an old logging road which would be perfectly rideable if the Forest Service hadn’t torn it up and closed it to motorized vehicles. Or, I should say, it would be rideable if it weren’t for all the new deadfall since I last hiked up there five years ago. It took us almost two hours to get to my geocache near the old sawmill, and about 40 minutes to get back down to the ATVs, totaling about 3.6 miles. When we arrived back at camp, everybody started packing things up while it rained, and Terry and I were the last ones to pull out. I got home early enough in the day to get the trailer unloaded, and I even had some time to mow the lawn and relax in front of the computer in the evening.

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GPS Tracklog and Photo Waypoints (Google Earth .KMZ Format)

GPS Tracklog and Photo Waypoints (Google Maps)