I got my first real look at the area in December of 2009 when I went after Home Away From Home by Berlan Eligab (GC1M5D5) prior to a meeting with some geocachers in Germantown for some night caching in Cameron Brown park. I also a one point used satellite imagery to get a feel for the size of the area along with identifying entry points. Reading online logs and viewing log pictures told me a few things about terrain and some of the things I would see.
Earlier this year, my caching partner jbgreer decided that he would like "Abandon Hope" to be his 1k cache. He had slowly made his way up to 999 finds and this would be the time that we would finally go after this cache.
Our first visit to the woods was on January 14, 2012. After hunting for another cache earlier, we only had a couple of hours to being our search. We made it to the first stage, and quickly learned the scale of the challenges we would be facing. We also discovered a trail system along the Wolf River which we later learned was the Shelby Farms Orange Trail. We made it to the second stage location after a bit of hiking and were stumped. Nearly out of time for the day, we left.
[ One of our first sights ]Our second visit was on February 25, 2012. We headed straight for Stage 2, which jbgreer found immediately. The container, however, turned out to be one that endorider had replaced, but had not been able to find the original. We ended up calling him for assistance on this stage. The next stage wasn't a problem for us, but we ran out of time to proceed further, so we hiked out the way we came in.
[ abandoned vehicle 2008 vs 2012 ]Saturday, March 10th would be the day we made our final attempt at finishing up the stages. It was forecast to rain that week, so we were uncertain that we would be able to get out there. On Thursday it rained two inches. On Friday, the weather cleared up, making a Saturday caching day possible. The weather Saturday was nearly perfect - cool in the morning and the high was predicted to be around 65 degrees.
After a nice breakfast, we headed to our proposed staging area. We figured that we'd save a little walking by entering the woods at a point nearer to the stage we were hunting. According to the satellite picture, it was a good idea. Things on the ground, however, were a little different.
It started out with lots of shoe-sucking mud. We didn't realize how bad it could be until jbgreer sank one leg in the mud, and had a tremendous amount of difficulty getting out - even with me trying to help. Thirty minutes later, he was freed and we were evaluating a different entry point.
[ Dangerous when wet ]
[ A better way to cross mud ]Once in the area, we were back on track finding stages. Soon it became advantageous for us to exit the woods where we came in, and move our vehicle back to the original staging point. I mentioned earlier that the cache had lots of stages. In order to minimize further spoilage of the hunt, I won't mention anything else about the stages themselves. We continued on our way encountering mental and physical obstacles and having lots of fun.
[ This was dry on our last visit ]
[ A handy way to avoid bushwhacking ]
[ We relaxed here and listened to some bullfrogs ]
[ I couldn't believe he made it! ]
[ Sometimes, it was just a walk in the woods ]Sometime around 4:30pm, we made it to the final stage. Certainly we were relieved, but we also knew that it would be a good while before we hunted a cache like this again. We took some time to write logs and then set forth on the journey out of the woods. We thank endorider for his help on two of the stages.
[ jbgreer signs log #1000 ]
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