Honey hole: a secret spot that has yielded mushrooms. Their locations are carefully guarded by foragers. But as a cacher I'm breaking the rules!
The Snowball
- A 1- to 2-mile round trip hike, mostly on-trail, moderate terrain
- Collect the clue in the final for the bonus cache
- Looking for mushrooms is optional
- Lion's Mane doesn't have a stem or cap
The Icicles
- Three stages leading to a regular final
- Use instructions and "artistic depictions" on map to locate the first three stages
- Calculation results in the 6 digits you need
- Hints are somewhat specific (S2 is virtual; I did not place this physical object)
- Creek crossing may be difficult after rain events
- The cache is available year-round; the seasons for Lion's Mane are summer and fall
- The mushroom photo above is from the reference point "Lion Log" (October, 2022)
The Mushroom
Often, Lion's Mane grows on damaged parts of living trees, sometimes high off the ground. I enlisted my son to climb a ladder to one I had spotted 15' up in a local park. It can also grow low down, like the one I found on this trail. It grows a surface of "teeth" that make it look like a pom-pom. You can find "pom pom mushrooms" at the local Asian markets; they are Lion's Mane.
Lion's Mane is a choice edible. It can be hand-shredded into small pieces and substituted for crab meat in recipes. Lion "crab"-cakes are delicious!
If you don't plan on eating what you find (and you shouldn't eat anything unless certain of your identification of it), please leave them in situ. Photos encouraged! Good luck!
You can validate your puzzle solution with
certitude.
Links to caches in the series
Park is open dawn to dusk. No night caching.
Congratulations to berningc for making his 6000th cache find here!