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I just got back from doing Oracle to Superior. We had left 4 gallons of water and a box of food with our names on it also stating that it was "Public After 01/03/2016" at the Kelvin Bridge cache box. When we got there, we discovered that all 4 gallons and half of the food was taken.

Now, I may have been naive leaving a box full of food closed with just boxing tape, but it doesn't make the person(s) who did this any less of an a**hole. I've learned my lesson, and I probably won't be using the cache boxes anymore, i'll either carry the extra food/water or cache it somewhere off the beaten path with GPS coords.

The suspicious thing was that when we cached the food and water a week earlier there was ~8 full gallons in there, and a bunch of near empties. ALL of the full gallons were taken from the box and only near empties were left. I have a hard time believing that those who actually use the trail would do something like this, but I may be wrong. Seems to me someone just happened to do a little exploring and found a bunch of free water and food. If this had happened at a more remote cache box like at Freeman Road, which we were heavily relying on, it might have been a bad situation.

We almost had to end our trip right there or walk into Kearny for more food because I didn't have enough to continue. Luckily a group of bikerpackers had just finished their trip when we got to the trailhead and offered us their food and water so we could keep going. I'm very grateful for that.

Just a word of warning for those who are thinking about using the boxes to cache goods. Don't get jacked like I did.

it wasn't az wandering bear's supplies that were stolen
the food and water belonged to dallinw, who started the thread

I always thought AZ Wandering Bear was a nice person. I'm confused.

No detective is going to spend time figuring out if someone died hiking because someone stole their food and water the previous day. And with pretty much no evidence to go by, nobody is going to be found to be prosecuted.

If your life depends on a cache, hide it well enough that nobody else will find it. If you leave it for someone to nab, it is your own fault that you die. Don't trust your life to the character of strangers!

AZDigger wrote:I'm going with Wandering Bear on this one. I don't care what the law says, if anyone molests a cache, and there is injury or death as a result of those stolen supplies, someone if identified will be prosecuted. Law enforcement or law breaker, it won't matter. No self respecting Ranger or responsible hiker would remove a cache contents for any reason other than an emergency. Those responsible for the theft of Wandering Bear's supplies are the same people who put graffiti on the walls at Pueblo Canyon, leave their trash on the trail, and destroy property. Those responsible will eventually run into a Wandering Bear somewhere out on the trail. God help them then because the laws won't.

@nonot
Although I liked previous comments of others, I think you nailed it here.

@nonot
I agree that people are the least most trustworthy thing in the back country. Rather sad I think, but it has always been so and will remain so.

I think nonot has the last word on this, and it's unfortunately all too true. If your life depends on your cache, hide it better or take it with you. Because of the time and energy required to preplace a cache, time I don't have, I limit my hikes to what I can carry with me. That limits me to about 3 days when I'm carrying 140 plus oz of water, 4-5 days when water is available on the trail. And that's under the best of conditions.

Jim_H wrote:I always thought AZ Wandering Bear was a nice person. I'm confused.

Don't be confused Jim. Like all bears I'm very nice. Until I'm not. Mostly I am nice to ladies, honest men, well behaved children, well behaved dogs, and the noble denizens of the forest and plain. As for as the rest, well.....

I don't think I've ever cached supplies. The back country is cache enough in itself for me. Just have an aversion to two-legged varmints.

Dallin - just wondering - was the water at FR4 also gone? I am just wondering, no, HOPING, that thefts are the result of the general public driving to TH, finding the cache boxes and thinking, "Gee, a free Circle K!". I really would like to think that it isn't a hiker / backpacker taking a cache. I'd like to think that the hiking community appreciates the possible dangers of doing that to another hiker. So if remote areas such as FR4 are not pilfered but TH that have road access are, maybe it is non-hikers taking the goods. I understand that these cache boxes are located relatively close to help out those wonderful volunteers that lug all that water out to them. But maybe the answer to to move the cache boxes a little farther up the trail and out of sight of Joe Public that is out for a Sunday drive, stops and wanders around from the parking area and sees the box. Don't' know. The real answer is - if it isn't yours, leave it alone.

sandyfortner wrote:Dallin - just wondering - was the water at FR4 also gone?

The cache at FR4 is still there, and there was still plenty. I carried 4 liters of water when we left the Gila river, but I only had about half a liter when we hit the cache (we camped about 1/3 the way up the climb). It would have been a little uncomfortable to make it to the trailhead without that extra liter of water.

Thank you for the intel on that cache!

Comparing the Freeman Road cache site to the Kelvin site: At Kelvin, there is water at the road maintenance office during business hours, in the yard of the mobile home park manager, and there is the highway to Superior.

It was said that the reason that the first new ramada there is made from all natural materials is that the local meth users would steal any metal to sell for scrap.

I'm sorry that the food cache was stolen and that now the thieves think that there will be food in the water cache box. Those thieves will be the Pinal county version of bears. The cache box will be a good decoy to fool them while future hikers hide their caches better elsewhere. Consider using the older parking lot that is across the bridge, turn off through the housing development, to directly above the RR tracks.

I left the CDT in in New Mexico sooner than planned a few years ago. I had water cached up south of Grants with my name on 2 gallons. Back in Florence, AZ, I got a call from a CDT hiker asking if I was going to use the water and if not, could he have it which I readily agreed too.

Not all hikers are the same.

Is there any reason to believe the incident prompting this thread is more than an isolated incident by the meth heads eaking out subsistence in that part of the world? The cache box could be moved a few hundred yards south, out of scum-bag range.

@Sredfield
I - for one - would prefer the boxes be moved, say 200-300 yards away from the trailhead? Close enough for cachers and trail angels, but too far for your average run-of-the-mill vandal and thief.

The box at the start of the Black Hills segment is a good example. It can't be seen from the trailhead.