Geocaching photos in Erindale Park of Mississauga

Usually after a light dusting of snow it makes Geocaching more difficult while others may just choose to avoid winter time Geocaching altogether. Others view winter as a greater challenge in that the caches can't been easily spotted and require clearing off the snow. Geocaching in Canadian winters does require bundling up for the cold days in winter attire and a warm coffee.

First stop for today's Geocaching adventure was an urban forest snuggled between a housing development and a private school. After parking at the school and short walk along the sidewalk we reached the edge of the forest. There were two "Regular" sized geocaches to be found in this area. First one was near a natural triangle as shown in photo. Second one was near this funky tree that had grown in a bizarre manner. Both featured logs to be signed (SL) and plenty of trinkets to trade (TFTC).

The next leg of the journey took us on a 30 minute drive down Mississauga Road and past the Bridal Path. Along the way we grabbed a cache that I had struggled to find on two previous attempts. It was nestled in a hedge at eye level, but it was small enough (35mm film container) that I failed to find it (DNF) before. With a couple extra pairs of eyes we had success today and were ready to move on to Erindale Park.

Before we parked at Erindale Park proper we stopped across the street for a quick grab that ended up not being so quick. The big challenge was that the GPS indicated where the cache was but we failed to judge just how steep the hill was for us. Terrain difficulty was 5 out 5 for our approach to the ground zero (GZ). The name of this cache location Sleeping Beauty was cutely based on the obvious remains of homeless camp of some sort. After a big of a hike and carefully balancing to reach the cache we SL and TFTC. From this point we realized there was a path to be followed that wound it's way back up to the hill providing only 1 or 2 out of 5 on terrain difficulty.

Having conquered the Sleeping Beauty geocache we drove across the street and aptly missed the main entrance to the largest park in Mississauga "222.1 acres or 89.88 hectares" and parked in a nearby neighbourhood. From this trail head we had a healthy climb down into the park that was both steep and dangerous. This park has three geocaches that we targetted today, but unfortunately the first one, micro sized made out of a pill bottle, proved too challenging and after 40 plus minutes searching at ground zero (GZ) we declared that cache as "did not find" (DNF).

Shaken up but ready for more we headed deep in the park in search of the regular sized cache hidden under a tree that required "crawling underneath to reach the cache". Intrigued by the nature of the hiding spot we pushed onwards with the Triton 400 GPS. Plenty of muggles (folks unaware of geocaching) running, walking, fishing, and talking at this park today.

It was a fantastic day for spending time outdoors and the creek was flowing at a brisk rate as we walked along it towards out next cache target. We pasted plenty of evidence of wild including the animal prints in the snow and the likely vacant bee's nest up in the tree. The Triton GPS was getting us close and suggesting we get off the beaten path as we were getting close to GZ for the cache. The hint given for this cache was "hidden in split log", which requires plenty of unsuccessful peaks into hollowed out logs that were scattered in this part of the forest. After much looking we spotted an idea candidate as the GPS indicated we were on top of the geocache. Sure enough with a bit of wiggling around our hands inside the split log we hit the cache jackpot. With another successful find we heading back to our parked car enjoying the wonderful scenario, but dreading the hike back up to the car.

For plenty more photos of today's adventure have a look at the gallery and stay tuned here for the next Geocaching adventure!