East Crater crater - 9-17-2018

[johnspeth]

September is glory time for hiking Indian Heaven. I decided to finally climb into East Crater to take a look. Here's a panorama of the crater floor with the start of fall colors.

East Crater crater floor

Getting into the crater was really simple. I approached from the north at a location that seemed to have the best shade cover so bushwacking was minimized. The crater rim and all the trees within the crater were all burned from the recent fire. The crater floor was untouched by fire. The pond was tiny. The place was quiet and calm with hardly any evidence of human visitation. I found a geo-cache behind a big boulder. It was easy to find a great lunch lounge among the many boulders of all sizes. The work to get to this kind of solitude is unparalleled in my experience.

The real bonus for me was the plentiful huckleberries especially around Lemei Lake. I found berries at their peaks of ripeness with a nice variety of size, sweetness, and even taste. Eventually I had to stop foraging lest a bear might get jealous.

[justpeachy]

Interesting to see how it looks post-fire. Thanks for sharing!

I found a geo-cache behind a big boulder.

That wasn't a geocache, at least not an official one. Geocaches are not allowed in designated wilderness. Maybe it was some kind of summit register?

[Webfoot]

johnspeth, thanks for the report. Wasn't it hard crossing the lava?

Geocaches are not allowed in designated wilderness. Maybe it was some kind of summit register?

What's the difference?

[acorn woodpecker]

There was no pond in the crater two weeks ago! Must have been all that rain this past week. The "geocache" seems more like a summit register to me. I saw another OH poster had signed it before us ("Q").

Here's what the crater looked like in fall 2015.

[johnspeth]

That wasn't a geocache, at least not an official one. Geocaches are not allowed in designated wilderness. Maybe it was some kind of summit register?

I didn't know there was a difference. I'm pretty sure I found a register. It had a paper and pen in it. I would think a strict interpretation of the Wilderness Act would also disallow registers.

[adamschneider]

I did East Crater four years ago (before the fire), and found that the south side was very brushy and not fun at all. The west side wasn't bad at all. The fire may change things, though.

2014 trip report map:

[justpeachy]

I didn't know there was a difference. I'm pretty sure I found a register. It had a paper and pen in it. I would think a strict interpretation of the Wilderness Act would also disallow registers.

Anyone with a container, paper, and pen can put a summit register on a summit, whereas geocaches are placed by people who have an account on geocaching.com and enter it as an official geocache there. People with the geocaching app (or a GPS unit) can then find the cache using the information provided by the cache owner. Geocachers can then log their find on the website (or the app). Often (but not always) a cache will say "Official Geocache" somewhere on the container.

As an example, here is the page for the cache at the former Flat Top lookout site.

Yes, you're probably right that think a strict interpretation of the Wilderness Act would not allow summit registers, but it seems to me the Forest Service looks the other way when it comes to those.

[retired jerry]

strict interpretation of Wilderness act wouldn't allow trails?

[Webfoot]

What part of the Wilderness Act is being interpreted as prohibiting geocaches? By their very nature they are hidden and compliant with "the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable;" and as far as I know they are not a commercial enterprise.