California Coast & Ocean

Liberating Minnie
We decide to hit the cannery tower first. It's near Monterey's Coast GuardPier, on a beach where SCUBA diving certification tests are often held.

We learned about this cache, called PDH, from the official geocaching website (www.geocaching.com), which provides difficulty ratings, descriptions, encrypted hints, maps, and visitor logs and photos. The cacher, Touchstone, stashed the hide on December 12, 2005. Out of a possible five, he gave it two stars for difficulty of finding and a stiff four and a half for difficulty of terrain. He then posted a description:

"The cache coordinates will take you to one of the old cannery buildings at the popular and scenic San Carlos Beach. A very busy place on weekends, but don't worry, you should have plenty of coverage to enjoy the site and make your trades in leisure.

"There is a large plaque explaining the cannery operation on the sidewalk above the cache location if you're interested in reading about it."

The cache name comes from a rating system invented by Jim Bridwell during the 1970s for big-wall rockclimbs in Yosemite. His CRS (Casual Rating System) had four levels: NBD (No Big Deal), NTB (Not Too Bad), PDH, and DFU. Since this is a family magazine, I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decipher the last two ratings.

David and I are climbers, so we figure PDH can't be too daunting.

Ah, well. This tower is, in point of fact, vertical, as in straight up: 90 degrees. Gravity has a certain edge on vertical walls. And the tower is 20 feet tall and seems to grow taller as we gaze up at it. But yes, it is also crumbling: there's texture; there are holds. And--this is the clincher--there's a cache inside.

David puts on his rock shoes--yellow Boreal Ninjas--then steps onto the wall near the tower's edge, grasping a corner up high with his right hand. He steps down. Looks up. "It's hard on the fingers," he mutters. He steps on again, reaches up, moves his left foot high, then frantically grasps for a piece of sheared-off, down-slanting concrete. It's a solid undercling. But what now? He's halfway up. There's nothing to do but dyno--lunge upward and hope he can grab that metal rebar at the top, which fortunately is smooth and of good length. And so he does. He grabs, pulls himself up, teeters a moment, then peers inside.

"Do you see the cache?" I ask.

"I see a ladder. It's rusty. I'll test its sturdiness." He continues to survey the tower's interior. "There's also a lot of junk in here. A rusty camshaft, for one thing. And plants. But at least it's not wet."

"Yes, but do you see the cache?"

"Not yet. There's a pile of driftwood in the corner. Maybe it's under there."

He drops over the side and disappears. I wait. "Take some pictures!" I yell.

A few minutes later, his head pops up over the top lip. He raises his arm in victory. Clutched in his hand is . . . Minnie Mouse? "Found it," he says. "And I've liberated Minnie."

He twists his back to me, dangles his body from the top of the wall, and drops to the damp sand.

Although I had decided the tower was too risky to climb, I am of course consumed by a need to see what's in there. David's shoulders provide a solid platform, and I quickly climb up, over, down, inspect the cache myself (Minnie was the prize, for sure), and climb back up and out.