The Cliffs

08/09/2007 By Kabutroid
Final cache of the day for this family. A group of seven of us went after this. The entire troupe consisted of myself, BlackCat Firecracker, WestStevo, GirlWithNoName, PurpleMonkeyDishwasher, my brother Greg, and my niece Cailyn. My fiancee sat back at the last cache we did (Cabin Lake cache part 1 of 2), since she wasn't up for 700 someodd meters of hiking (note: about 700 was the 'as the bird flies' view that the GPS said. I'm pretty sure we probably came close to doubling that in actuality... see attached picture of the GPS's track log) ToungeOut ).

Probably best she didn't come too in retrospect. Since none of us had the foresight to check the cache description or difficulty/terrain rating of the cache before we set out, we had no clue what was in store for us. She's more of a city person than anything else (although I AM trying to convert her ToungeOut ), and the kind of hike needed for this cache probably wouldn't have sat too well with her. In actuality, none of us even had any water or food on us (well, except my fiancee, who had a full bottle of sweet, ice-cold water in her purse... and thusly remained with her while she waited for us to make the trek), and my niece was... 12 years old as of finding this, if I'm not mistaken. She DID have to be carried on WestStevo's shoulders for a decent amount of the trip.

But after having read the cache description now... 4+ hours? Man, maybe if you're deciding to crawl or crab-walk to the cache ToungeOut . The group of seven of us, being somewhat slowed down by the niece, several picture-breaks (see attached for the ones I took), several detours of trying paths and going back to a different one afterwards, and logs of weaving back and forth as a whole... STILL took only about 2 hours round-trip. For the way back, we took a shorter path... but there was still lots of weaving and wandering around.

We found several secrets to doing this cache and saving the most energy though. Secret the first... going from one expanse of rock to next worked pretty nicely for us, since we got relatively good chunks of distance completed without having to through underbrush or anything rough. Secret the second was going through the forest patches of coniferous trees with a bed of moss on the bottom. The bottom-halves of these trees have like... no branches, making it easy to traverse. I was mildly worried that the spongy moss we were walking on in there though might sap some strength, but there were usually little indented trails (assumingly from various animals) the we could follow. Then again, when we were walking on the moss, it wasn't bad anyway.

Bushwhacking however... that's what soaked up a fair amount of energy. Oh yes... I whacked a ton of bush today ToungeOut .

That's right... I said it Wink .

But yes... after much whacking of bush, we eventually found our way to a BEAUTIFUL view of the marsh below (or whatever that pond was with what appeared to be pitch-black liquid in it. It could have been tar for all we knew ). Unfortunately, since we didn't read the cache description before going after this cache (we just saw "Hey, this cache is 700 someodd meters from the last one... let's go for it!"), we didn't look for the survey marker, and I never noticed it Frown .

On the way back, we took a significantly more direct path back to the previous cache and my fiancee, took turns chugging what was left of her water, and congratulated eachother on an excellent adventure. Definitely won't be forgetting about this one anytime soon BigSmile .

Thanks again for the awesome adventure (where our group was apparently the second to find the cache... and third and fourth and fifth and sixth, whenever everyone else finishes logging it ToungeOut ), awesome view, and awesome day in general. This was the end of the most fun geocaching day I've had to date BigSmile .

Took: Matchbox car for my niece
Left: Logbook entry, 'Hulk' pog slammer, Original Stash geocoin, and chainmail ball