A phooning adventure - the foothills

Click for an enlargement and then come back here for the story.

I had good intentions and simple plans: I was going to go to a park in the hills and enjoy some time reading. What unfolded was far from that.

Hey, I thought, why not do a quick search on the internet for geocaches in that area (read my brief description of geocaching here). I found the satellite views I decided it was better to just carry the chainsaw in plain view. for a couple of caches. One of them included a huge water tank and a prominent curved footpath. A marker on the map placed the cache between the tank and the path. It looked to me like a simple walk from the parking lot to the top of a foothill. "Surely, it won't be that difficult."

Hey. Water tank = hill. Hill = nice view. Geocache location + interesting view = good chance this would be a good Phoon photo opportunity. So, now you know the reason behind the location of the Phoon photo.

About the chair. I knew I would be standing in dead grass on a hilltop. I saw this as a chance for a tongue-in-cheek tribute to those phooners who have incorrectly concluded that getting up onto something is a requirement for Phoon photos (I elaborate on this problem here). So, I figured I would take a chair with me and stand on it. I had wanted to take a nicer chair to emphasize the absurdity, but the metal fold up chair sounded easier to carry on the upcoming hike.

With my brain already in absurd mode, I grabbed Then I noticed a white truck making its way from the house on the nearby foothill. some hedge cutting shears, figuring I would hold those in the air while phooning on the chair. I opened the trunk to toss them in and saw that I had left my chainsaw in the trunk. Hmm. A chainsaw in a panoramic view of a Phoon on a chair. That would definitely be more interesting than gardening shears, I told myself. So, that explains the chair and the chainsaw. (Maybe not to your satisfaction, but that's all I have to offer.)

Reading was no longer in my mind. I was off to bag a Phoon while geocaching; two birds, one stone.

The rest of this story is about the unexpected, about the challenges of phooning with a chainsaw on a chair on a foothill within view of the house of the park ranger who has a nice white truck.

Someone had tacked up a homemade sign at the entrance to the park; there was some special event at the farm in the hills. It was obviously well advertised: the parking lots were full of families with kids, heading for the major hiking trail. Hmm. This would be trickier than I thought. Carry a chainsaw with me through the parking lot? Even though the geocache was nowhere near the trail to the farm, I still had to get through the parking lot. I decided it was better to just carry the chainsaw in plain view than to carry a covered-up chainsaw. And off I went, camera and tripod and fold up chair dangling from my left hand, chainsaw in my right hand. In the parking lot, I saw a mother looking at posted maps. I asked if she was looking for the farm and steered her in the right direction. A helpful man with a chainsaw.

I headed for the less-used nearby entrance to the open space. Passing the bank of parking lot trees, I got my first glimpse of the foothills that hid the cache. I liked the satellite view: it made the foothills look much flatter and more reasonable. In reality, they were fairly steep. I had not even reached the foothills yet and the muscles in my chainsaw arm were burning from the weight, my heart was racing from the effort, and I was sweating from the activity and from the unusually warm weather. I put everything down and hunched over. I thought of competitions on TV, like in Survivor, where the winner is the one who can hold the heavy stuff the longest. Vote me off the island. Oh my gosh, my goal was the top of this big foothill ahead of me.

I didn't want to take the regular public trails that easily wound their way up the hills. First, they were public and I had a chainsaw. Second, I now was keenly aware of how soon I wanted to stop carrying this heavy chainsaw. So, I followed trails left by deer (and mountain lions and rattlesnakes and geocachers) that were more direct and, accordingly, fairly steep.

What looks like little bushes next to the red path are about 6-10' tall or taller.


I stopped so many times in that hike to recover from the heat, my high heartrate and muscle pain. I finally reached the water tank, a massive multistory structure nestled in the foothills, way bigger than I would have guessed from the satellite view. Nearby was the sunbleached remains of a twisted old oak that had toppled long ago. I made a mental note to come back to the oak tree in a bit for a Phoon photo.

The geocache page mentioned something about a "caged" area. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the map and was now going by memory. (I stopped using a GPS device some time back because satellite maps pinpoint the location far faster for me. However, this was the first time I was trying my GPS-less approach in an open field.) I had found the water tank. I had not yet found the curved footpath. But I did find something that matched the "cage" hint: a young tree with deer-blocking wire fencing around it.

My memory told me that I was too close to the water tank for the cache, but it was the only "cage" within view and certainly worth a quick look. Near the base of the tree was a rock and large portions of broken painted pottery. That fit geocaching: Kyle Buller / It's not so bad / 7-27-83 5-21-17 an odd place for pottery, and something simple to cover the cache, perhaps. The fencing could be peeled back, enabling me to get inside, another good sign. There was nothing under the rock or pottery. Then I found something flat and hard, obscured by dust and dead grass. "Aha, a lid to a buried container!" I pried it up. Nope, it was just another piece of pottery with an inscription. It had Kyle's name on it and some dates that didn't make sense. Had I stumbled upon some memorial made by someone?

After all of this hiking with a metal chair and a chainsaw, I found that I couldn't take more than 50 steps before I'd need to set everything down again and rest. It took me another 10 minutes of staggering up and down through the thorny weeds on the slopes to find the footpath and then find another caged tree. There I quickly found the cache, a nice plastic container wrapped in camoflauge tape, crammed with trinkets and a logbook. After additional resting, it was time to consider how best to capture geocaching and phooning in one photo.

I had not anticipated the difficulty I would have in setting up the chair. The first 10 or so places I set the chair, it would break through into one of the many old gopher tunnels as I climbed onto it. But finally I found a solid spot. I practiced climbing onto the chair and getting the chainsaw up. I then began taking a series of photos that I would later stitch together into a single panorama.

Then I noticed a white truck making its way from the house on the nearby foothill. I recognized the style. Park ranger. The ranger's house. You can see it in the panorama, too. (Until then, I had no idea who might've lived in the house.) I wouldn't be surprised that he had seen me while looking out of the house. I figured he had binoculars in his truck, so I moved back to my tripod and made the motions of looking through the camera, trying different angles, looking all photographer-like, hoping this would address any concerns he might have. He kept moving. I was a human near enough the major water tank to garner the attention of an official.

I concluded, from the speed of his truck on the distant road, that I had plenty of time to take the rest of the panorama photos. I grabbed the chair and chainsaw and started making a quick exit off the hill toward my car. Then I grabbed the tripod and headed toward the fallen oak to get that shot. Through its branches, I saw the ranger on foot near the distant entrance to the water tank area, headed my direction. That was enough for me. I grabbed the chair and chainsaw and started making a quick exit off the hill toward my car, the opposite direction from the ranger.

Now, why should I make a hasty exit? Had I done anything wrong? No. Hey, I even reviewed the formal "do not" sign on the way into the park. No bicycling without a helmet. No dogs. No fires. There was nothing about chainsaws. And I wasn't going to use the chainsaw, much less start it. But think about it: would you want to be detained by a park ranger, in the heat of the sun, having to explain that you were only there (1) for geocaching and (2) to take a panoramic photo of you in the foothills, standing on a metal chair holding a chainsaw? I had nothing to hide but a lot to try to make sense of with a guy who is there for our safety. Conversation or no conversation? I liked the idea of no conversation and continued my scurrying down the hill.

I covered far more distance moving downhill than uphill before having to stop again, but my arms and heart would still require that I put everything down and catch my breath.

I reached a point where a paved road crossed my path back to my car. If the ranger hadn't found me atop the hill, he might now be cruising around looking for me. And part of his road network came right by me.

It wasn't far to my car. If it were any other day, it would be easy to get there, if it were cooler, if I weren't out of breath, if I didn't have a tripod, metal chair and chainsaw, and if there weren't the crowd I was now looking at.

As quick as my weary body allowed, I made my way down and across the road and paused nearer the crowd. The area didn't look familiar, I now realized, because I had ended up near the busier entrance, not the entrance I had come in. With the condition I was in, the shorter, busier path back to my car was what sounded better. I watched for a larger gap in the stream of people and timed my merge into that traffic from my separate trail.

On the footbridge near the lot, I overheard a mother saying something about the chainsaw to her kids. With a few more of her words, I understood she was joking with them that I was able to juggle a tripod, a chair and a chainsaw. Cool mom!

Back at the car, I got everything back in. I saw a black shirt in the car and was glad to get out of the one I was wearing that was sweaty and spotted with weed thorns.

About 10 minutes later, Click for an enlargement I was taking another Phoon photo near a second geocache by the entrance to the park. A ranger drove by and stared at me. I was glad I didn't match the description of the guy by the water tank.