Purple Heart (GC38YDJ) - 1/28/2012

It was Friday evening and I was making plans to hunt caches along a "power trail" on Saturday, when I was contacted by geocacher shandrum. He was planning to try out some new equipment for the new 5/5 cache Purple Heart by Tiger130 (GC38YDJ). Not only was he FTF on the cache by scaling roughly 60 feet up a tree, but he had been helping others make the climb and was constantly trying to come up with easier ways of doing it.

I was apprehensive about going, because I had promised to do it on the same day as my pal jbgreer did it. Having tried it once before and failed, I knew that I needed more practice climbing and didn't want to go with jbgreer and then fail to do it. I decided to accept and invitation and agreed to meet shandrum at the parking area at Herb Parsons Lake at 10am on Saturday.

I got to the park a little early and met up with shandrum. He told me that nelms3 would be going with us, and he arrived as we were heading out. It was a cool and sunny morning. We arrived at the now familiar location and shandrum began to setup the climbing gear. He introduced us to his new method of getting the rope up into the tree. It was a pneumatic bean bag launcher.

[ Packing the bean bag before using a pump to compress the air. ]

It took two tries to get the starter rope placed properly. Pretty good considering it was shandrum's first time to use it. After the climbing rope was set up, I was rigged up in the harness and instructed on what I need to do to go up and down the rope. It was an easier system than I had used before and things started out fine. I made it up higher than I had the previous time with much less effort. As I got higher, I began to have trouble staying upright. As I leaned back to rest a minute I suddenly got a really bad headache. I knew I couldn't continue to climb, so I lowered myself to the ground. Once I got to the ground, walked around a little bit and had something to drink, I felt better. I'm pretty sure that my clothing and my position in the harness had somehow managed to interfere with the blood flow to my head.

I didn't want to waste everyone's time (including mine) by not making it up the rope, so I asked the guys to haul me up the way many of the previous cache finders had done. All I basically had to do was hold the rope to keep myself semi-upright and the guys on the ground would do the rest. It was still tough, as my weak and tired hands had difficulty holding onto the rope. Inch by inch they pulled me up. Just over half way up there was a large branch that I had to maneuver around. When I got above it, I got a chance to stand on it and take a short rest break.

[ Looking down from the rest point. ]

[ It feels good to rest. ]

I felt better after the brief break and the guys hauled me up the rest of the way to the cache. I should have approached opening it from a little higher vantage point, but I wanted to get a picture facing the container.

[ Purple ammo can surprisingly well in focus. ]

Finally, it was time to sign the log. I had to be careful to not drop anything including the ammo can lid, the logbook, the cache contents, or my pen. Oh - and my camera.

[ Signing the log with numb hands. ]

Before I came down, I wanted to get a picture of the ground from above. I couldn't move around in the harness, so I held out the camera, pointed it down and took a shot.

[ I couldn't actually see this view until I downloaded the picture. ]

[ Shot from the ground. ]

I made sure the container was closed and my pen and camera were in my pocket and proceeded to come down slowly. I had forgotten to put my gloves back on so the rope was a little warm. After I came down to earth, shandrum tested out a new harness that he had bought. He used a slightly different climbing technique than he had shown me previously.

After all of that, shandrum packed up his gear and nelms3 offered to carry it out. While we were hanging out in the parking area, another geocacher giardia_boy came up the trail. He had been after another cache that wasn't far from where we had been. While we were talking, shandrum demonstrated his new bean bag launcher.

[ The pneumatic bean bag launcher. ]

After nelms3 and giardia_boy left, I planned to stay a bit longer to let my headache subside and ended up accompanying shandrum to hunt a nearby cache. My drive home was uneventful, but I ended up taking a longer way than the way I had come.

On a final note: I want to thank shandrum for his help and patience, and I thank nelms3 for taking pictures. Hopefully at some point, I'll be able to make the climb successfully without being pulled up.

Bobcat (Lynx rufus) - 1/13/2012

Everyone needs to hunt a cache on Friday the 13th. If you fail to find it, you can simply blame the day for your bad luck. On this Friday the 13th, jbgreer and I chose a night cache - Bobcat (Lynx rufus) by bitbrain (GC38KQ5) to hunt.

Since night caches are best done in groups, jbgreer took to the GOWT facebook group to find people who might be interested in accompanying us. I would have asked myself, but I appear to have been blocked by the group admin, a geocacher named Titansfan, after I caught him making disparaging and homophobic remarks about me on facebook. What a pathetic skunk. Anyways, back to the cache hunt...

We arrived at the parking area for the cache, which is in the Wolf River Wildlife Area around 6:30pm. Waiting for us were two geocachers that we met at an event two weeks ago - Balls2thefloorgeocacher and ProudMother06. There was another car there with kids apparently engaged in pot smoking.

[ Three excited members of the team. ]

It was a cold night, roughly 30 degrees. Perfect weather for hiking. We checked to make sure that we had everything we intended to take with us, marked a waypoint to the parking area and headed west down a dark gravel road. Eventually, we made it to a point where we needed to cut into the woods and make our way to the first tree with two retro-reflective tacks on it.

[ Can you say retro-reflective? ]

It was fairly easy to spot tacks on the trees along the path, even though it looked like (to me) that I was the only one with a good flashlight, and I was leading from behind. It didn't take long before we discovered that a lot of the ground was wet. I was wearing running shoes, because they were less painful than my waterproof boots. Once I got used to the fact that my feet were going to get wet, I relaxed and enjoyed the hunt. According the the cache page there were 46 single reflectors between the pairs that start and end this cache. It was too easy to lose count, so we hoped that we didn't miss any along the way.

[ There were lots of small streams along the way. ]

[ It was very dark. ]

[ Success! ]

We arrived at the cache exactly one hour after leaving the parking area. After signing the log, the real fun began. I was aware of our position relative to where we parked and believed that I knew the correct direction to head in order to get back onto the gravel road the soonest. However, navigating in the dark using electronic compasses, we somehow managed to head in a direction 180 degrees away from the correct way.

[ This is how you know you are going the wrong way. ]

After enjoying some sights that we normally would have missed going the right way, we decided to simply aim for the waypoint of the parking area and essentially go back the same way we came in. There were a few differences, though, in the path we followed. Going to the cache, we crossed three small creeks. On the way back we crossed a lot more. At one point after crossing the same creek multiple times, I shouted "WTF?" in frustration. We eventually made it back to the road and a short while later back to our vehicles and parted ways.

I'm glad that we had others with us, if only to share the misery of walking through ice-cold streams again and again!

One Two One -Two Brown Bag Lunch - 1/2/2012

The plan for today was to meet up with jbgreer and attend One Two One Two - Brown Bag Lunch by Abiectio (GC39CA4) at Shelby Farms Park. It started at 12 pm, so jbgreer came over and got me and we picked up some sandwiches to eat before the event started. We had no plans to pick up caches along the way, so we got there a bit early. Just before noon, other geocachers showed up. I was amazed at the number of people who showed up on what turned out to be a sunny, but extremely cold day.

[ Good sized crowd met at the north pavilion. ]

Lots of stories were swapped along with the meeting of cachers old and new. Most of the cachers were local, but there was at least one person from Jackson, TN and a couple of people from Arkansas.

As the event came to a close, a group of us made plans to go over to Herb Parsons Lake and try getting Purple Heart by Tiger130 (GC38YDJ), a 5/5 cache that requires climbing around 60 feet up a tree. Fellow geocacher shandrum had all of the necessary equipment and expertise to help us attempt to reach the cache and we appreciated the opportunity to hunt it.

[ The lake also looks beautiful. ]

[ shandrum sets up the climbing ropes ]

After a short walk to the cache location, shandrum set about rigging up the lines and harness. We then got a quick tutorial on how to use the ropes to ascend the tree. Abiectio was the first volunteer to attempt the climb. He didn't have much luck starting out, so he gave up to let the next person go. I was next to volunteer. I got myself setup with the harness easily enough and started out fine, but within 15-20 feet got myself into a situation where I couldn't climb any higher. I think I simply needed more practice with the climbing technique, but on this day time was short so I descended to let someone else try it.

As a consolation, Abiectio, jbgreer and I went to find the nearby cache Purple Heart by Tiger130 (GC38YDJ) , just a short distance away. Even with this being mine and jbgreer's second time here, it still was a tough find. When we met back up with the group, we learned that Sfearnow had successfully made the climb and had descended. Looking back, it would have been a good idea to have stayed and watch him use the ropes. After jbgreer and I left, aschrack also made the long climb.

After reading the online cache logs, I saw that many of the previous finders were hauled up the tree instead of doing the work themselves. While even that experience would have been interesting, I hope that I am able at some point to ascend the tree using my own power.