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Don't Bust the Crust LbNA #14435

Owner:Adoptable
Plant date:Apr 11, 2005
Location:
City:Moab
County:Grand
State:Utah
Boxes:1
Planted by:A-Bear (&J-Bear)
Found by: artTrekker
Last found:Apr 24, 2008
Status:FFFFFFFFaa
Last edited:Apr 11, 2005
Placed by A-Bear

As we (Blackvelvetrav, Lizman and A-Bear) arrived in Moab and started figuring out which letterboxes we would have time to find, I kept remembering a note KAT put in her clues. Throughout our adventures this particular weekend we eventually saw what she was talking about. Please Don’t Bust the Crust while you’re in town. =-)

NOTE: Moab takes its cryptobiotic soil VERY seriously. It is a black cyanobacteria crust that provides nutrients to the plants in the area. Once we step on it, the soil will not recover in our lifetime at least. In its younger stages, this soil is hard to spot. As a result, we letterboxers are to stay on rocks or dry washes when wandering the area searching desperately to find yet another letterbox. This crust keeps the area from being a Sahara type desert by binding the grains of sand together until mosses and lichens grow on them, providing moisture retention and nitrogen to the plants. At one point in our adventure we realized we were in a land mine of the cryptobiotic soil. We tried our best to retrace our footsteps (sorry to admit) out of that area. Your search for this box will earn you a pin that we hear from the locals is very hard to come by these days. We turned our adventure in that land mine into a game of leapfrog from whichever rocks we could find. In your search for this box, you too must learn to play leapfrog. The challenge is to not bust the crust. We were fortunate to get some of these cool “Don’t Bust the Crust” pins when we stopped at one of the parks in the area.

Rock climbing and leapfrogging is a must for this box. Please keep a close hold to your children so they don’t fall into the swimming HOLES along this route. =-)

Clues: We had the honor of meeting Kat’s energetic dogs after Moab Box on the Rocks. One in particular is named Ticaboo who is an expert at playing leapfrog to not bust the crust. There’s something about dogs in that they can actually sense where to step to not hurt the soil. On Ticaboo’s adventure to jump off his diving board, he continued on to show us how to not bust the crust. He jumped off the board at 300 degrees leapfrogging his way to the juniper tree 20 yards away. He was able to get there by leapfrogging from rock to rock and following the ledge around left to make his way up to that Juniper tree. From there he went 4 paces/ 8 steps for 220 degrees to a small slot in the rock showing us “Don’t Bust the Crust.” Of course if you are really tired after a fun filled weekend in Moab you might accidentally say Don’t Crust the Bust. Either way, you get the idea. =-) Enjoy!

Please let us know how you adventure goes.