[pct-l] Water Caches

[AsABat]

A few updates:

>   True, one should not COUNT on a water cache but they are for more
than
> emergency use. They are designed to make Section A a little bit easier
and
> in fact, for most thruhikers, they do.

Absolutely. Do NOT count on caches. Caches may not be stocked when you
get there. (It's happened to me - I wasn't counting on it, but KNEW
first-hand there was water there. Well, thought I did. There wasn't. I
did survive.)

>   Take the San Felipe Hills cache, a Sierra Club cache.
> 
>   Take the Scissor Crossing cache, an ADZPCTKO effort. There is water
at
> Scissors Crossings but it is ugly, cattle fouled water. 

Reports this dry year say that there is no water in the creek at
Scissors. There MIGHT be water upstream north of 78, or maybe 1 mile
east up the highway to the swamp as the guidebook suggests, but I
wouldn't count on it.

>   Take the cache before Oreflame Canyon, an ADZPCTKO effort. 

This cache is no more. There is a new trailhead a 1/4 mile off trail
about a mile north of the site of the old cache.


There are other water sites that are, in essence, caches. Pioneer Mail,
for example, is just a tank that is filled by a water truck by the feds
for the benefit of horses and hikers. I guess the difference is that
it's "official" and in one big container instead of a bunch of smaller
ones. Third Gate Cache is there because the well planned long ago has
never been drilled.


I have wrestled with whether or not to include caches on the water
reports site. Currently I list just ten, all well-established and
well-known with or without my posts. Some of these are even in the
guidebook. A number of others have been removed, some because they are
gone, some because they were even less reliable (since no cache is
reliable), some because they were small caches the trail angel asked be
kept a surprise. 


My official position on water caches is "whatever."

AsABat
www.4jeffrey.net/pctwater