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.