Cabezon Peak is a freestanding volcanic plug located northwest of Albuquerque. The easiest route to the summit is a 4th class rock scramble I first did with my friends Avi and Clayton in May of 2004. At the time, I wasn't really a climber - I was more interested in finding the geocache hidden on the summit.

Ten years later, I'm actually a legitimate rock climber, and Avi and I both wound up in graduate school in the University of Oregon. We decided to make a return visit while back in New Mexico for the holidays.

The climb was easy and fun, and not at all icy. We managed to find the cache, with considerable difficulty - and without GPS. Memory was all we had to go on after my smartphone died in the bitterly cold wind.

The cache hasn't seen much traffic, and the logbook has stayed dry. We read the signatures left by our teenage selves, and even found the same koosh ball that we left there in 2004. Back in our geocaching days, we never thought of our finds as future time capsules - and maybe this is the only one that really is like that, since it's so hard to get to. Either way, this short trip was a fun slice of personal history.